Mid-Day witnesses increase in digital ad revenue after participating in Google News Initiative program

Mid-Day witnessed an increase in digital ad revenue

Technology has been changing the way we consume content nowadays. It is not only affecting the way we see the news but also extends multiple revenue streams before publishers. Digital advertising is one such powerful option for media houses to ace financial stability. If leveraged properly, it can support media organizations to a greater extent. However, not every publisher is aware of the technical know-how of running online advertising, or they lack the required technical infrastructure.

In order to empower publishers technologically, Google News Initiative conducted Advertising Lab Program last year. Mid-Day was one of the fortunate publishers that not only participated in this program but also yielded remarkable outcomes in terms of ad revenue, the website traffic and page views. After participating in the program, Mid-Day witnessed a whopping increase in digital ad revenue by 25%. Due to such amazing results, Google has published Mid-Day Case Study on their website.

Before this program began, Mid-Day faced two major challenges: High website page load time and low advertising revenue. Although the teams were aware of the importance of low page load time for increased user engagement, reach and revenue, they were clueless about how to improve them.

However, as part of this program, the Mid-Day teams received hands-on knowledge of Core Web Vitals, page load time, and revenue opportunities, which helped them build a thorough understanding of these areas. It quickly broke all the existing technical roadblocks and allowed Mid-Day to improvise in these areas by practically implementing the knowledge imparted by the GNI program. As a result, our organization not only aced ad revenue but also improved page load time and overall revenue by 30% and 25%, respectively.

Also read: Google announces various AI-based initiatives for India's digital needs

On the GNI Program, Vikram Kene, General Manager, Music Broadcast Ltd, stated, "For a news website like Mid-day, which strives to be at the forefront of all innovation and technological advancement, GNI has been a big support. Gaining measurable insights, decoding the core web vitals, and deriving implementable results are the three main factors that have helped Mid-Day become one of the leading news websites. GNI played a vital role in building our understanding of technology and charting out our roadmap to growth."