With an audience of 2.7 million unique users (and growing) every month, Farrelly Atkinson’s digital media portfolio covers cycling in all its flavours: road, mountain, gravel, e-bikes across a range of platforms via web, video, and podcast all projected across the full suite of social media outlets. 

The Brief

Farrelly Atkinson was an existing  publisher with Triple13 – utilizing their header bidding and AMP monetization solution. Farrelly Atkinson knew that Triple13 was the class leader in AMP monetizationtechnology, so it was no surprise when Triple13 was acquired by Freestar in late 2021.

With this acquisition, Farrelly Atkinson was looking at Freestar to:

  • Improve Their Tech Stack – Farrelly Atkinson was looking for a tech stack that could provide more optimizations for their monetization strategy.
  • Provide Receptive Customer Support – They enjoyed their working relationship at Triple13 and were hoping to continue their true monetization partnership with Freestar.
  • Improve Revenue Lift – Farrelly Atkinson was looking for additional revenue lift.

“Of all the programmatic partners Farrelly Atkinson has had, Freestar has all the best parts of an ad monetization solution needed for a successful ad operation.“ 

The Approach

Farrelly Atkinson was one of the last Triple13 publishers to migrate to Freestar’s header bidding wrapper. Their setup was complicated with multiple websites so the Freestar team worked diligently behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition. Freestar started by onboarding their smallest website to be able to work through any particular glitches and specific ad sizes. 

After the migration of their final site, Farrelly Atkinson immediately saw a revenue uplift in just one day, especially for their header bidding monetization. To make that possible, Freestar implemented:

  • Demand Stack Optimization – Freestar removed demand partners that weren’t performing which contributed to an uplift in RPM. For example, ebiketips.road.cc saw an RPM uplift from an average of $8.18 to $8.70 as a result of the optimized demand.
  • Ad Refresh – Freestar reduced ad refresh on one of Farrelly Atkinson’s sites which significantly improved RPM.
  • Additional Ad Units – After reviewing their sites, Freestar added new ad units to provide additional revenue lift such as Superflex and video adhesion.
  • Dynamic Flooring Technology – Freestar’s dynamic flooring was implemented throughout Farrelly Atkinson’s websites to determine the best flooring solution and maximize ad revenue.

The Results

Farrelly Atkinson’s Customer Success Team implemented a variety of tactics that made a significant positive impact across their websites. When migrating to Freestar, Farrelly Atkinson saw a 26.45% revenue lift across its portfolio. Comparing Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, after the migration was complete, here are the results across their portfolio:

  • Road.cc saw a 33% increase in daily average impressions and a 35% increase in daily average net revenue.
  • Off-road.cc saw a 192% increase in daily average impressions and a 165% increase in daily average net revenue.
  • Ebiketips.road.cc saw a 381% increase in daily average impressions and a 284% increase in daily average net revenue.

By completely outsourcing their ad operations to Freestar, Farrelly Atkinson was able to utilize their limited  resources better and more effectively.