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Every publisher today wants to wean themselves off display advertising. For mid-sized publishers relying on banners won’t cut it. Slate has made this is a priority, and it now says native ads are almost half of its total revenue.
The online politics and culture publication accomplished this with putting native at the center of its sales strategy rather than treating it as an add-on. Advertising supplies 90 percent of revenue, and native is half of that. Display and podcast advertising still accounts for the other half, although Slate expects display dollars to move towards programmatic, following the industry shift. (The remaining 10 percent comes from other sources like the Slate Plus membership program.)
To prioritize native, Slate hired or retrained its 10-person sales team. Slate Custom, the custom ad creation unit, brought in a new staff under Jim Lehnhoff, the former head of Gawker Media’s content strategy. The 13-person custom unit now focuses on making native ads that are closer to Slate’s editorial DNA of smart commentary. Slate also got more aggressive about buying off-site distribution for the ads, for clients like Jaguar and Chase....
Native advertising starts to gain hold at Slate.