Austin Sloan originally started Brickseek.com as a way to locate certain hard-to-find toy sets at retail stores. The website quickly evolved into a discounted reselling platform and community for unique items across many product categories and retailers. His passion for finding these items and being able to resell them at highly discounted prices was the driving inspiration to continue evolving the popular website.

The Brief

Brickseek was only utilizing AdSense prior to signing with Freestar and while they were content with this

monetization approach, they were not completely happy. They felt a lack of clarity and insight into how things were performing. They were making decent ad revenue but struggled with the idea they could be unknowingly leaving revenue on the table.

We turned our attention to improve these 3 key areas below:

  • Increase display ad revenue
  • Increase eCPM
  • Deliver higher total impressions

"I love the relationship that we’ve built here and we hope it only continues to grow. The increase in revenue has been nice, but the relationship and comfort the Freestar team has given us is invaluable."

Austin Vandever

Head of Marketing

Our Approach

After an in-person meeting, hosted at the Freestar headquarters in Phoenix, Brickseek was happy to kick the relationship off. Brickseek left that meeting feeling confident and optimistic that this would be a vast improvement to what they were previously doing to monetize their ad inventory. Brickseek officially joined the Freestar publisher family in April 2018.

Our team executed the following:

Optimized Both Desktop and Mobile Ad Units

Ensuring ad units are optimized for desktop and mobile is a crucial step for monetization. Our team analyzed Brickseek’s ad units and added additional high-impact flex sizing to key ad units on desktop and mobile. Additionally, Freestar implemented a sticky footer unit to boost viewability and CPMs.

Assessed and Improved Demand Stack

User experience is top of mind for Brickseek. Freestar’s relationships with the top header bidding partners in the space allowed us to instantly introduce high quality demand partners. Our team has audited Brickseek’s demand stack to maximize their revenue and minimize any ad quality concerns.

Implemented a New Video Product

In order to maximize revenue, CPMs and viewability for Brickseek, Freestar implemented our multi-faceted video solution on desktop and mobile. The unit drives high performance without disrupting the user’s experience and has become a significant additional revenue stream for Brickseek.

The Results

Doubled net revenue within the first 6 months

18%

increase in CPMs

$50-60K

per month in additional revenue

25%

Increase In RPMs