How Blockthrough became a valued partner of Future plc
Founded in 1985, Future Publishing is a global platform for specialist media and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Its content reaches one in three people in the UK and US through market-leading brands and events that span specialist interests across B2C and B2B, connecting consumers worldwide with their passions and giving them a place that meets their needs.
Building the future of media
Future generates revenue by building niche, passionate audiences across virtually every content category, with particularly strong reach within gaming and technology. A few of their iconic brands include T3, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, and PC Gamer, among a total portfolio of over 250 titles.
As part of its growth strategy, since 2018, Future has also acquired multiple brands including, What Hi-Fi, SmartBrief, Marie Claire UK and US, Who What Wear, and go.compare. As the company continued to grow and amass a massive digital audience, adblocking was becoming a bigger issue for lost inventory, prompting Future to start looking for solutions.
After a thorough market evaluation in 2020, Future decided to start testing Blockthrough due to its easy integration, focus on ensuring a positive user experience, and demonstrated track record of delivering superior revenue performance for other large media brands.
Tapping into a new revenue channel
Blockthrough’s integration required Future to insert a single-line JavaScript snippet into the header of the sites in their network. This code contains a lightweight adblock detection script and an ad-serving script that is triggered in user sessions where adblock usage is detected.
“Blockthrough has been an amazing partner in generating revenue from this subset of our audience.”
The solution works by filtering bids based on creative compliance with the independently-governed Acceptable Ads Standard.
Our technology gave Future the ability to start serving light, non-intrusive ads to opted-in adblock users using their existing advertising stack, while supporting all the demand partners that Future works with on standard web inventory.
Using the solution meant being able to provide a respectful and consent-based experience to adblock visitors, while improving key metrics such as average revenue per user (ARPU) by making more of Future’s own audience addressable.
The recipe for a successful partnership
During initial onboarding, Blockthrough activated more than 50 sites within Future’s network. “Ad tech integrations are typically hard, but Blockthrough took less than a week to deploy and started to produce results immediately,” says Nick Flood, Global Ad Product and Revenue Operations Director at Future plc.
By detecting hundreds of millions of sessions originating from adblock users and monetizing them at healthy CPMs, Blockthrough has helped Future plc unlock a seven-figure annual stream of incremental revenue—without tying up their organizational resources in any ongoing development or maintenance work.
Monthly and cumulative revenue generated for Future plc, Jan 2020 to Mar 2023
Future is also able to recover its direct/sponsorship line items using Blockthrough’s solution, which constitutes premium inventory sold at rates much higher than the open exchange, further increasing the overall yield from this audience set.
“Blockthrough has been an amazing partner in generating revenue from this subset of our audience. As a multi-platform publisher that operates in specialist markets, it’s important that we monetize our user base effectively, as we continue to scale,” adds Nick, summing up. “Our partnership has been highly successful.”