Zoosk finds a monetization match through yield management best practices

Background

Zoosk is a leading online dating company that personalizes the dating experience to help users enjoy their dating experience by providing a fun, safe, and easy way to find their person. Zoosk’s behavioral technology is constantly learning from users’ interactions to deliver the best matches in real time. Available in over 80 countries and translated into 25 languages, Zoosk is a truly global online dating platform. Zoosk initially began working with LiveIntent to monetize their email newsletters.

Goal

After placing LiveTags in their newsletters to create email ad inventory, Zoosk wanted to pursue additional strategies to grow their monetization program and increase their yield. Specifically, Zoosk had a keen focus on improving revenue by enhancing their existing inventory.

Solution

Zoosk was already monetizing their triggered emails, which provide updates on matches, activity on the platform or suggest matches to users. While the emails were performing well, the team at Zoosk sought to partner with LiveIntent to explore ways to improve advertising revenue. To boost revenue, Zoosk needed to increase the bid density on their email inventory. The LiveIntent team reviewed Zoosk’s LiveTag setup and found that they were only allowing 300x250 creative to serve. With this knowledge in hand, the LiveIntent team advised Zoosk that by updating their LiveTags to allow more ad sizes, such as 970X550 and 970x250, Zoosk would be able to accept more demand, leading to greater bid density and, ultimately, higher revenue.

Being mindful of their users’ experience, Zoosk wanted to ensure that the change to accept ads of various sizes would not impact their email engagement. LiveIntent worked with Zoosk to configure the ad slots across all of their email templates while closely monitoring and providing frequent updates on performance for two weeks. After seeing a lift in ad revenue with no negative impact on newsletter engagement, Zoosk decided to continue allowing their email inventory to accept multiple creative sizes instead of only the 300x250 size.

Results

In the thirty-five days after updating Zoosk’s LiveTags to accept multi-size creatives, the increased bid density driven by the new sizing lead to a 34% increase in fill rate, 73% increase in revenue-per-open, 14% increase in CPM , and 35% increase in overall revenue compared to the thirty-five days prior to upgrading. Zoosk also saw an 18% increase in impressions and a 38% increase in CTR during this timeframe, further supporting the fact that email engagement wasn't hindered by the update – in fact, they saw a bump!