We get a range of enquiries from advertisers, and not all of them are the right fit for what we do. That is not a problem - we would rather be clear about who we work well with than take on relationships that will not produce good results for anyone.
This article is a direct explanation of what we look for in an advertising partner, and why those criteria matter.
A specific audience you are trying to reach
The advertisers who get the most out of working with us have a clear answer to the question: who are you trying to reach? Not “adults 25-54” or “people interested in lifestyle content” - a specific description of the type of person who would buy their product or service, with some clarity about why.
This matters because our value is precisely the ability to connect advertisers with publishers whose audiences match a defined profile. If an advertiser cannot articulate who they are looking for, we cannot find the right publisher for them.
This does not mean the target needs to be narrow. We work with advertisers targeting a range of audience sizes and profiles. The requirement is specificity, not smallness.
A product or service that is genuinely relevant to that audience
Advertising works best when there is real relevance between what is being advertised and the context in which the audience encounters it. We are not in the business of placing irrelevant ads in front of people who have no interest in them - it does not serve the advertiser, it does not serve the publisher, and it does not serve the reader.
We have turned down advertising arrangements where we did not believe the fit between the advertiser’s product and the publisher’s audience was strong enough to produce meaningful results. It is a harder conversation to have than simply taking the revenue, but it is the right one.
Privacy-compliant creative and tracking
The publishers in our network operate to a high standard of privacy compliance. We need the advertisers we work with to operate to a similar standard.
In practical terms, this means advertising creative and any associated tracking should not require third-party cookies, and should be compatible with the consent frameworks operating on the publisher sites where the advertising will appear. If an advertiser’s conversion tracking relies on cross-site user tracking, we need to work out how to handle that before we start a campaign, not after.
This is increasingly straightforward for advertisers who use modern ad technology - most major platforms now support cookieless conversion measurement as a standard option. But it requires the advertiser to have actually set this up rather than relying on the default configuration, which is often not privacy-compliant.
US, UK, or EU market focus
The publishers in our network have audiences concentrated in the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union. These are the markets where our CPMs are competitive and where we have advertiser demand that matches the available inventory.
Advertisers whose campaigns are targeting markets outside these regions are unlikely to find our network a good fit, simply because we cannot reliably match them with the right publisher audiences. We would rather say that upfront than generate disappointing results and waste everyone’s time.
A willingness to evaluate performance honestly
We provide clear reporting on campaign performance, and we expect advertisers to engage with it honestly. This means being willing to consider that performance benchmarks derived from programmatic campaigns may not be directly applicable to direct placements on specialist publishers, and that the right comparison metrics may be different.
It also means being willing to give a campaign a realistic evaluation period. Programmatic performance data is available almost immediately; direct placements on specialist sites often require longer observation periods to produce statistically meaningful conclusions, particularly for lower-frequency conversion events.
The advertisers we build the best long-term relationships with are the ones who treat this as a genuine evaluation rather than expecting immediate validation of pre-existing assumptions.
Getting in touch
If you are an advertiser and you think there is a fit, the right first step is a direct conversation with Lenny. We will go through your targeting requirements, your product, and your compliance setup, and work out fairly quickly whether we can do something useful together.