Project overview
Initial Position
watson has set out to become Switzerland’s most popular news website and build a lasting bond with its readers at the same time. The news market is highly competitive, which means that attracting new, loyal customers presents a major challenge. In other words, success or failure depends greatly on displaying relevant articles matching users’ interests.
- Sector:Publisher
- Webrepublic customer since:2017
Goals
Providing users with relevant, topical articles in real time
Continuously developing a loyal customer base
Increasing market visibility
«Today, social media has become the primary news source for young people. Our focus is no longer limited to expanding reach but is also on interaction. And testing. Webrepublic is a partner we can rely on for this.»Tarkan Özküp
Chief Commercial Officer, watson
Measures
Webrepublic has come up with a data-driven approach that combines website data, tech scripts, Google Trends and Google’s algorithms. The search engine strategy focuses on two campaign types – “News” and “Trends” – and complements watson’s current Google Ads configuration (search campaigns, display and YouTube advertising). The news campaign is helping to constantly boost relevant content such as “sports” or “World Cup 2022”, efficiently and with a lasting impact. The trend campaign places popular topics and recent developments at the center of the advertising strategy. Immediately after their publication on the watson website, certain sponsored articles are displayed as part of the trend campaign when they match current search queries and Google Trends.
Each campaign is built around Webrepublic’s custom tech scripts. The AdFeeder tech script ensures that data portfolios can be managed effectively with various data feeds.
Fast: only accessible news articles are displayed.
Cost-effective: outdated articles are excluded based on the feed parameters.
Automated creation and management of complex campaigns, ad groups and data matching-based ads along with the creation of new ad groups and ads based on templates and keywords.
The news campaign at a glance:
All articles on watson are given tags, making it possible to automatically place the ad in the headline based on the user’s search query text. This produces an aggregation of news content relevant to the particular search query, in turn maximizing relevance since content is targeted at the user automatically based on tags.
The trend campaign at a glance:
The news script developed by Webrepublic matches news articles on watson with data from Google Trends in real time. The keywords are then matched with the search trends from the past 48 hours. These trending terms are registered automatically to deliver the most relevant ad content. In short, the solution is a fully automated traffic booster that adapts to the constantly changing stream of news topics.
Results
The implementation of news and trend campaigns has improved the relevance of ads, expanded reach and reduced costs over a period of nine months compared to the previous year (1/1/2019 - 9/30/2019 vs. 1/1/2018 - 9/30/2018)
49% lower cost per click
+ 84% overall clicks
+ 93% click-through rate
WE TURN MARKETING INNOVATION INTO BUSINESS VALUE
«The volume of information falling into the category of journalism is increasing every day. The competitive pressure is growing due to social media, blogs and various alternative formats. So, together with watson, we have developed a made-to-measure solution that allows internal and external data signals to be used as a basis for promoting current trends on watson.ch. As we continue to shape the future of online news, our guiding principle is: A lot accomplished, a lot to be done.»Webrepublic AG
Team spirit, innovation, quality, and long-term partnerships. Since 2009, we have been writing success stories together with our clients, enabling them to tap into the full potential of their online channels and develop further in the digital environment together.
