Navigating the challenges of serving advertisers while reimagining design strategies to enhance user experience and drive mission-driven goals

Matching clients with effective advertising strategies

Advertising is more than just a revenue stream for The Salt Lake Tribune—it’s an opportunity to connect businesses with the right audience while supporting local journalism. The Tribune’s approach to selling ads is a collaborative process, ensuring each campaign is tailored to meet the client’s specific goals. Insights from Stephanie McCuen, our Account Executive, and Ciel Hunter, our Chief Development Officer, shed light on how we navigate this complex space.

Understanding the client’s goals and audience

When McCuen begins working with a new client, she starts by identifying their target audience. Demographics such as age, geography, and household income are important, but so is understanding real-time behavior. 

“We’re not just taking a dart and putting it on a random target,” McCuen explains. “We place smaller clients where their money will suit them best.” Not every client has a large budget, but that doesn’t mean they can’t succeed. “Sometimes it doesn’t take a big budget,” McCuen says. “It’s about working smarter with the budget we have.” A typical campaign runs for three months, allowing enough time to gather data, optimize strategies, and even tweak ad creatives as needed.

Balancing high-impact ad placements with user experience

Ad placement plays a crucial role in campaign success. High-viewability positions, like the top of article pages or sidebars, are often the first choice. Clients also prefer their ads to appear next to relevant content, ensuring the messaging resonates with readers with similar interests.

Hunter suggests exploring whether a cleaner site might benefit both users and advertisers, creating an optimal experience for everyone. Ad design matters, too. “As long as it looks clean-cut,” McCuen advises. “The less clutter, the better.” She notes that most clients see better performance on mobile devices, where the 300×250 ad format is particularly effective.

The power of video ads

In the world of display ads, video often outperforms static graphics. Videos can convey more information and provide a richer user experience. They’re especially effective at helping audiences understand the client’s message. 

McCuen notes that the average click-through rate (CTR) for video ads at The Salt Lake Tribune is 0.73%, compared to 0.37% for static ads.

Navigating the nonprofit advertising space

Hunter highlights the challenge of balancing diverse needs within limited space on a site that incorporates subscriptions, donations, and advertising. The Tribune’s approach to ads isn’t differentiated by its nonprofit status but by the inclusion of additional calls-to-action (CTAs) alongside its mix of programmatic, direct-sold, and house ads, such as subscribe and donate prompts. 

We have often found that programmatic ads require extra bandwidth and can slow down the site and sometimes compromise user experience. The reason for this delay being header bidding to pull in programmatic ads and thus resulting in slower load times. Therefore, we have equally begun to focus on tailored ads that align with the Tribune’s values and mission.

“Figuring out what products will deliver for advertising is key,” Hunter says. “We’re balancing what’s good for users with what helps local businesses reach local readers.”

The Tribune continues to explore how advertising can evolve to meet the needs of both clients and readers. Hunter emphasizes that while ad products may change, revenue from ads and donations remains critical. The ultimate goal is to make our content more accessible to all by exploring ways to open up the paywall in the future, while still delivering strong value to advertisers. By aligning audience insights, strategic placements, and tailored messaging, the Tribune helps businesses make the most of their advertising investments while staying true to its mission of serving the community.

The Tribune’s mission-based approach doesn’t mean sacrificing advertising success. Instead, it involves redefining metrics for return on investment (ROI). “Can we develop a different ROI metric that aligns with our mission?” Hunter asks. For other nonprofits newsrooms, balancing mission and revenue is a shared challenge.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead, our focus continues to be on balancing the needs of our readers, advertisers, and editorial goals. This aligns closely with our article redesign resource in a few key ways:

• We’re exploring how to better integrate ad placements without disrupting the reader’s experience.
• We’re leveraging insights from both clients and readers to design a page that serves as both an informative, highly engaging platform and an effective revenue generator.

By reevaluating how we prioritize and structure these elements, we aim to create a more dynamic and sustainable digital space that meets the needs of all stakeholders.

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Cite this article

Partida, Alex (2024, Dec. 11). Balancing client success and user experience in digital advertising. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/balancing-client-success-and-user-experience-in-digital-advertising/