Top 3 ad strategies Puck News uses to generate paying subscribers

I analyzed their ad copy to find out how they get their subscribers.

Also in this issue:

📌Microsoft Advertising is live – and crushing it!

📌Trade Desk pushes UID 2.0 — should you buy it?

📌LinkedIn now uses AI to optimize your ads

📌Facebook has started treating local news as spam

📌Substack now lets you add videos to your conversations

📌Media Company of the Week: Puck

Let's dive in.

Microsoft Advertising is live – and crushing it!

Microsoft has released a significant upgrade of its ad platform, the Microsoft Advertising Editor. You can now use it to place video and Connected TV (CTV) ads, plus the usual display and search ads. The new ad platform lets you also place your ads on Netflix across ten countries – a step up from its narrow B2B focus.

The Trade Desk been pushing its cookieless UID 2.0 tracker to take advantage of the upcoming 3rd-party cookie deprecation. This model relies on email addresses to work creating its own challenges. Since getting readers to provide their emails is an uphill battle for most publishers.

LinkedIn now uses AI to optimize your ads

LinkedIn is adding AI to its advertising tools.  LinkedIn's AI will analyze user data and suggest the best ad formats and content for each campaign. Has anyone used the new LinkedIn ad platform? Curious to know how it performs compared to their old version.

Facebook has started treating local news as spam

According to Press Gazette, Facebook is treating local news posts as spam, causing them to disappear from Feed. Facebook denies that, responding that the posts tried get likes and clicks by false content.

Will this be another push for the gradual adoption of the Fediverse? I'll review Fediverse in depth in an upcoming issue. Subscribe to get notified.

Subsctack now lets you add videos to your conversations

Substack has started 2024 with a focus on improving its product, adding new features almost every couple of weeks. The new chat feature lets you talk to your readers with video.

Media Company of the Week: Puck News

Puck was founded in 2021 by a group of expert journalists, including Julia Ioffe, Jon Kelly. Its great value comes from delivering detailed, in-depth news analyses by senior journalists. Puck's subscription-only model is perfect for the type of expert content they create.

Here are the results: the top 3 strategies Puck uses to supercharge its ad copy

Ad Copy Analysis

Over the previous weeks, I have been looking at the way 1440 and theSkimm have used their ad copy to drive paid traffic to their website. This week, I’m changing up the formula and analyzing the ad strategy and messaging of Puck, one of my favorite subscription-only news companies.

Here are the results: the top 3 strategies Puck uses to power up its ad copy

Insider Knowledge and Analysis: Puck presents itself as a source of deep and unique insights. Phrases like "the story behind the story" and "behind-the-scenes conversations" support this image. You can also see the same approach in their slogan: "Puck begins where the news ends."

Highlighting Individual Contributors: Several ads mention specific authors like Matthew Belloni , Dylan Byers , and Julia Ioffe as a hook. If your writers are famous, this strategy can attract the right readers. It also shows the value of paying for access to exclusive content from Puck's journalists.

Exclusive Content: Using terms like “exclusive access” and “expert reporting” positions Puck as a premium source of news analysis and in-depth reporting. This also gives readers a sense of their own sophisticated taste in news.

For more tech and product updates curated for media operators, subscribe to Media Tech Report.