In the past I have tipped my hat to Gawker media for their ability to sell blogs to premium advertisers. I think in general Gawker does an amazing job at not only understanding content, but also advertisers needs as they seem to have a high fill rate of premium campaigns and a lot of repeat buys. A lot of this stems from their ability to custom creative work and integrations on their sites, something advertisers seem to be very drawn to. Below is a video promo Gawker has put together. The tag line “Gawker Media….. Welcome to the future”
My first thoughts on this is that Gawker has done an excellent job building these sites to the point where they have all these mainstream media clips that talk about their sites. In fact, Gawker has also sold some of their sites to other networks or merged sites together if the growth trajectory was not up to snuff. Kudos to CEO Nick Denton for not only making that smart move, but developing a system where Gawker owns the actual sites, controls the ad inventory, and has a formula that works for them to compensate writers. Denton also has been pretty public with any moves he makes which imo has also been beneficial as every move Gawker makes is transparent to their writers, advertisers, and their viewers. As for the video, I give it high marks. Rather then downplay that Gawker and blogs in general are considered snarky and low brow, they embrace the label. The Digital generation is too sophisticated and savvy to buy the garbage tabloids at the check out aisle. This is our chosen medium to get less formal commentary on the world. Blogs take more irreverent tones, produce content faster then mainstream media, and are more in tune with our don’t take anything seriously/ mock everything and anyone mindset. The ending is exceptionally powerful. Something along the lines of “like it or not….this guy is the future”. They then scroll through the portfolio of sites before it resolves to the “This is Gawker….Welcome to the Future” with a call to action to their sales microsite. Overall a good effort and one that open up some eyes to just how large the Gawker empire is.
About Ben Koo
Owner and editor of @AwfulAnnouncing. Recovering Silicon Valley startup guy. Fan of Buckeyes, A's, dogs, naps, tacos. and the old AOL dialup sounds
