Dive Brief:
- Even though a number of advertisers have been said to be put off by Gawker's notoriously button-pushing content, Gawker Media gets one third of its revenue from native ads and e-commerce sales, which it calls “performance advertising.”
- Gawker is currently hiring to expand its technology, native advertising and blogger staff.
- The media group is dependent on native ads and e-commerce because its largely millennial audience doesn’t respond to more traditional interruptive advertising, according to the company.
Dive Insight:
Gawker Media’s group of websites regularly serve up edgy and controversial content, so much so that Co-Founder Nick Denton said the media company faces what he called a “Gawker tax.”
But despite Gawker's advertising challenge, it earns 33% of its revenue through native ads and e-commerce. And to maintain this revenue it’s currently increasing its staff in three areas -- technology, native advertising and bloggers writing about products. According to Gawker its native ads get a 2% click rate, and website visitors spend two-and-a-half minutes per native ad post, a number that favorably compares to three and half minutes for editorial content across Gawker Media’s websites.
Denton told Digiday, “Native advertising works far more effectively in many cases than display in driving attention with readers. It works especially well with the rather demanding affluent millennial audience we have.”
For Gawker native ads outperform more traditional interruptive advertising which isn’t effective with its millennial audience.