The Challenge

As part of its subscriber outreach, SMI also publishes 17 different newsletters, covering daily news, business news, food, wine, travel and breaking news. Combined, SMI reaches more than 100,000 email subscribers.

As a local/regional news outlet, Digital Operations Manager Tomas Chadsey says maintaining that connection with subscribers is crucial, but so is driving revenue. To drive ROI, a few years ago, SMI began selling direct ads in their newsletters. The only option was a 300×250 unit, if the space was available. If there was no advertiser, there was no revenue—they had no way to monetize unsold inventory.

Good Intentions, Poor Performance

Looking for a more flexible solution, SMI got set up with a well-known email advertising provider. But it soon proved to be more work and more time-consuming than expected. Loading creative in the first system could take hours.

“We had to upload creative to our ad server, then wait for that to sync up with their server. This process might delay trafficking the ad by 2-3 hours. Sometimes we have to get an ad up there right now, and this just wasn’t happening,” Tomas said.

Then, there was the issue of reporting. In order to monitor performance, Sonoma would have to consult their own ad server, plus the 3^rd party email ad system. “It was just extremely time-consuming and cumbersome,” Tomas said. “Not to mention, we had ads that wouldn’t load and if we needed support, it was very difficult to reach someone in technical support.”

The Solution

The Spark that Ignited a Flame

SMI had been looking for a better, more streamlined solution, but it was a chance encounter between Sonoma Chief Digital Revenue Officer Jose del Castillo and Jeeng CEO Jeff Kupietzky that sealed the deal. The two met at a Digital Innovation Conference in New York, and Jose knew immediately that Jeeng would provide the solution to Sonoma’s troubles.

“Jeeng provided the direct integration with Google Ad Manager that we needed to streamline the entire process,” Tomas says. “Now we can upload creative once, have it load into our template within seconds, and if we need to change anything, it takes just a few minutes to re-populate the new creative into the template.”

In addition to streamlining ad ops, Sonoma can also now use Jeeng’s Ad Network to backfill any remnant inventory that isn’t direct sold, to capitalize on every monetization opportunity. And, because of Jeeng’s direct GAM integration, performance reporting is consolidated into one, simple platform, which makes it easy to track ad traffic and ensures more accurate billing.

The Results