Viva Mundo.
A study-abroad magazine whose banner ads weren’t giving clients much in results. I proposed selling universities sponsored articles instead of banner space, and annual revenue grew 300% in the model’s first year, with the magazine becoming a business line with its own team of three.
A blog students already trusted
BMI Global Ed runs international student-recruitment fairs, where universities meet students planning to study abroad. Viva Mundo was its magazine for those same students across Latin America and in Vietnam: two years of practical articles about studying abroad, which also sent readers on to register for the fairs. It had readers. It sold banner ads, but they weren’t giving clients much in results.
Students
Read Viva Mundo in their own language to plan studying abroad. They come for information they can trust.
Universities
Want to reach exactly those students, and already pay BMI to meet them at its fairs.
BMI Global Ed
Connects the two at its fairs, and the magazine sends its readers on to register for them.
Why not banners
The standard way to earn from a blog is to sell space on the page, and Viva Mundo already did. Selling more of it would have meant earning from the page while ignoring the reason people came to it: information about studying abroad they could trust.
- SELLS
- Space on the page
- READERS
- Came for the articles around it
- THE UNIVERSITY GETS
- An impression
- SELLS
- A story about the university
- READERS
- Read it, clearly labelled as sponsored
- THE UNIVERSITY GETS
- Clicks on its own call to action
Sell the content, not the space
Readers already trusted Viva Mundo's articles, so the articles became the product. Universities bought a sponsored article about themselves, written by our writers in the reader's language and clearly labelled as sponsored. Readers got useful information; the university got attention from students already planning to study abroad.
Written for each university
Our writers produce an article about the university, in the language of the students it wants to reach.
Labelled as sponsored
Readers always know what is paid for, so the magazine keeps the trust that makes the article worth buying.
Ends in the university's call to action
Each article leads to what the client wants: a lead, a registration or a visit to its own website.
Three tiers of paid placement inside an editorial CMS
The platform runs the sponsored model inside the same CMS the editors publish with. A university buys one of three tiers, priced by where on the page its article appears, with the positions chosen from analytics on which spots readers viewed most. The platform then spreads the guaranteed views across the campaign so each university gets what it paid for by the end date, and reports the results back to it. Banner ads and webinar promotion stayed in the package, but only as add-ons to a campaign: the sponsored article was the product. Billing stayed offline; the platform ran the campaigns, not the payments.
Better for the client, bigger for the business
Sponsored articles beat banners on the thing each university was paying for, and the model turned the magazine into a business line with its own team.
Better on what clients watched
More readers clicked through to what the university wanted, fewer left after a single page, and readers stayed longer and went on to the magazine's other pages.
Three new roles
A writer, because the company was now selling writing, not space; a campaign manager to run the universities’ campaigns; and a salesperson to sell the tiers.
The platform existed. The business model didn't.
My contribution was the idea and the direction, not the code. I proposed the sponsored-article model, introduced its tiered pricing, and directed the vendor team that rebuilt the platform around it.
- Proposed selling universities sponsored articles instead of banner space, based on what readers already came to the blog for.
- Introduced the three-tier pricing structure, with page positions chosen from analytics on which spots readers viewed most, and contractual delivery guarantees on each tier.
- Directed the vendor team that rebuilt the platform around the model.
Tech stack
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