This document provides recommendations for Grist Magazine to increase advertising revenue. It recommends that Grist explore syndication partnerships, partner with advertising networks, offer premium membership packages, and invest in search engine optimization. An analysis of Grist's operations and competitors found that partnerships, sponsored content, and grants are major revenue drivers. Recommendations aim to diversify revenue sources through advertising while maintaining Grist's mission of providing accessible environmental journalism.

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“ Grist Magazine: Serving to be a Beacon in the Smog since 1999”
Final Portfolio: Analysis of strategies to increase advertising revenue in the
Online Nonprofit journalism and news industry
Table of Contents
Executive Summary-------------------------------------------------------------------------2
Introduction to Earned Income----------------------------------------------------------- 3
Internal Analysis------------------------------------------------------------------------------4
Question to answer #1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------5
Question to answer #2 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 5-6
Question to answer #3----------------------------------------------------------------------6
Strategic Recommendations------------------------------------------------------------7-9
Summary of Recommendations---------------------------------------------------------10
Conclusion-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------10-11
Sources Cited--------------------------------------------------------------------------------11
Executive Summary:

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Grist, located in Seattle Washington was founded in 1999 with the goal of
providing some of the most innovative news stories and covering some of the most
important issues in our world today. Their style of storytelling comes through providing
strong insight into the environmental issues of the world, while interjecting humor and
comedic relief into their stories. Grist also covers a plethora of topics, including
business, politics, cities, food, energy, green living and climate as well. The mission of
Grist is to get people to start talking and to be inspired to take action towards
demanding for environmental change.
Like all businesses, Grist’s relies on their revenue stream for successful
operations. There are several revenue sources that Grist primarily finds their funding
from: which the primary sources come from grants, sponsorships and donations. The
secondary source of income and revenue that Grist relies upon is through earned
income avenues. Grist has several ways in which they build earned income, majorily
through a wide variety of advertising campaigns.
Not only at Grist, but the non-profit industry as whole has shifted their focus of
increasing revenue from sponsorship and fundraising to finding effective channels of
earned income. History has shown that non-profit companies have been able to
successfully accomplish and implement their mission while relying majorily upon grants,
sponsorships and other sources of philanthropic funding. However, non-profit
companies are slowly shifting their focus towards utilizing earned income channels.
However, there is a certain hesitation to pursue a wide variety of earned income
revenue cash flows as there is a negative perception that comes with the ideology of a
non-profit making earned income. This reputation and perception has certainly stirred
up troubles amongst other non-profit organizations, but should not be a major concern.
Ultimately, the purpose of this research is to provide a deeper insight into
increasing earned revenue through advertising in the nonprofit world. In addition, there
are three essential questions that we will answer in pursuing the goal of increasing our
revenue stream through advertising. As we progress further into this analysis, we hope
to be able to successfully compare and contrast the current advertising strategies of
Grist to the strategies of the other industry leaders, looking for ways to open up revenue
streams and create opportunities to maximize profit levels.
Introduction to Earned Income
In today’s world, society has placed an expectation upon the nonprofit world that
the revenue stream comes through sponsorships, donations and grants. There are

4. 3
several reasons that have nonprofits concerned about utilizing earned income as a
revenue stream: since the majority of a nonprofit’s revenue stream is through donations
and grants, that cash flow that they receive is completely tax-exempt. Investopedia,com
has earned income defined as a “the income derived from active participation in a trade
or business including wages, salary, tips, commissions and bonuses.” Earned income
is a revenue stream that is rapidly expanding in the nonprofit world; as in a case study
down by the Knight Foundation there were 20 companies which reported nearly 5.7
million in earned revenue in 2012; which was twice the amount of the amount of earned
revenue that was reported in 2010.
According to the Knight Foundation; there are six common strategies that are
utilized by a majority of nonprofits which are corporate sponsorships, events,
advertising, syndication, subscriptions and services. However, the common ethical
question is always whether nonprofits should use earned income as a revenue source.
Since the income that nonprofits generate are generally tax-exempt, there is a certain
level of uncomfortability when nonprofits start utilizing earned income as a revenue
stream. While, there are valid concerns on whether to utilize earned income, there are
many positive aspects of having earned income as a revenue stream. In this analysis
report; there are several strategies and recommendations to introduce to Grist for
increasing earned revenue through the world of advertising and to answer several key
questions as well.
Internal Analysis:
Universally, in order to develop a deeper understanding of what earned income
strategies would be most efficient, one has to know and understand the ins and the outs
of their company. Below is an SWOT analysis of Grist’s current operations and of the
overall company, highlight some of the strengths, weaknesses, threats and
opportunities of Grist and their current operations.

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Strengths Weaknesses Threats Opportunities
● Strong
Advertising
Campaign
● Strong
editorial
content
● Strong Social
media
presence
● Limited sources
of earned
revenue
● High bounce rate
● Strong Amount of
Competitors
● Propublica has increased
in several major categories
( facebook fan growth,
twitter followers, page
views). While they are not
majorily ahead of Grist-
they are a company that is
on the rise.
● Disruptive Technology-
(which has not been
utilized currently) I.E (
Youtube, social media
sites).
● Explore offering
other services;
such as press
plus and e-book
services.
What advertising networks are being used by non-profit media organizations?
Across the spectrum, non-profit media organizations have been utilizing ad
networks to boost their advertising campaigns. The official definition of an online
advertising network is defined as: “a resource or company for online publishers to
monetize their advertising inventory.”
Conceptually, there are three main types of advertising networks; which are
Vertical Networks, Blind Networks and Targeted Networks. Vertical Networks is
dedicated to deliver advertising to a specific audience, it brings together a set of
publishers’ websites related to the same topic, often aggregating medium and small

6. 5
niche site. Overall, they have low global reach but with a high reach on the specific
target. Blind networks specifically do not let advertisers know where their ads would be
displayed. Generally, blind networks will offer advertisers low rates for the remnant
inventory that they bulk-buy at low cost. Also, they will often resell the ad inventory for a
performance basis. Furthermore, targeted networks focuses on specific targeting
technologies that have already been been built into the Ad server. Specifically, Targeted
networks focus on using consumer clickstream data in order to enhance and increase
the value of the inventory that they purchase. The specific networks that are commonly
utilized are Mantis Ad Network, New American Media, Chicago Community Trust,
Cause Ad Network as well as Digital Context Next. One of the main competitors of
Grist, Propublica has currently signed a deal with the Publica Media Interactive Network
What advertising products are their biggest source of revenue (banner ads, email,
sponsored content)?
Over the years; digital advertising has seen many shifts in technology, changes
in strategy and campaigns, as well as a plethora of different ways as well. One of the
major drivers in increased revenue through advertising is sponsored content. Several
successful methods in sponsored content which have been utilized by competitors
includes data page sponsorship and audio advertising. Another heavily utilized strategy
is the Interstitial ad, which is a stand-out advertising feature that appears on the page
that you enter and it remains there for 12 seconds. Propublica, one of the competitor’s
of Grist utilizes the daily email. In essence, very similarly to Grist they utilize direct mail
strategies that they send out to all of their subscribers. In their annual report, Grist
reported that their direct emails had an open-rate average of 18 percent and click-
through rates of 3 percent. Ad spacing is another essential factor of any digital
marketing campaign. Several leading ad spacing strategies that have proved to work
innovatively well are the leaderboard-full banner, in addition to the skyscraper side rail
which is 160 by 600 pixels. In addition, the half-banner which is 234 by 60 pixels;
furthermore another commonly used ad spacing strategy is the section drop-down
which is 320 by 50 pixels, and a wide skyscraper of 160 by 600 pixels. The Voices of
San Diego, another major competitor of Grist has also explored several different
advertising strategies and opportunities. They have utilized several different ad spacing
and sizing, as well as creating a new campaign called the morning report sponsorship.
Furthermore, they have also started to bundle their advertising services The three
packages that they offer are the Proclaim it; which costs $3,500 a month and offers ten
morning reports and 150,000 ad impressions. The second advertising package that they
offer is the Publicize it package, which has $2,500 for seven morning reports and
80,000 impressions. Finally, the last package that the offer is called Announce it, which
goes for $1,000 dollars and offers five morning reports and 40,000 impressions.
What are their biggest revenue drivers in general?

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Amongst the competitors of Grist, we can see that there are several clear factors
that stand out. With all non-profits; the majority of the revenue streams comes from
grants and sponsorship opportunities. For Propublica in particular, they have
$3,857,000 coming from contributions and related grants, and their major grants
account for $7,753,000 of their revenue stream. Another major competitor is the Texas
Tribune, which have seen their main revenue streams come from corporate
sponsorships and major gifts. In 2014, they reported $1,445,377 in corporate
sponsorships and $781,130 in major gifts.
After conducting further analysis; there are several innovative ways that can
significantly increase the earned revenue through advertising strategies. One of the
most commonly used strategies is the ideology of self-targeted ads. This is known as
the “holy grail” of website advertising, as in essence this strategy sells advertising
campaigns directly to companies which are interested in reaching the same audience.
The way that one can effectively increase the success through the self-targeted ads is
to differentiate your advertising services and offerings. Another strategy that is
commonly used is the partnership with a wide variety of multiple ad networks. The
reason why this is commonly used is because is allows you to diversify where you ship
off your ad inventory, it allows you to also drive the value of your advertisements as
well. If you can correctly auction your services off to the highest bidder, that increases
the value of your impressions and also generates an higher level of revenue per
impression. This only increases the value of your resources through generating a higher
level of demand, which means a larger revenue stream. In addition, several other
strategies that have been mentioned include testing different ad locations, to constantly
try different types of ads- including contextual, display and standard spacing.
Advertising Recommendations:
The Nonprofit News industry is experiencing major shifts towards diversifying
their income streams. One of the major revenue streams that the Nonprofit News
Industry are starting to utilize is advertising; which the Knight Foundation had reported
that this is the most utilized earned income source by nonprofit news organizations.
After further analysis and research of commonly used advertising strategies amongst
the industry leaders; we have formulated several recommendations to increase revenue
driven by advertising strategies.
1.) One of the first professional recommendations that we suggest is for Grist to
explore syndicate and unique partnerships. Syndication also allows for the
products that they offer to be licensed to other websites in exchanged for
monetary value, which increases revenue levels and overall exposure.
Recently one of Grist’s main competitors, The Voices of San Diego joined in a

8. 7
syndicate partnership with a local NBC studio, which provided them an amazing
opportunity to expand its audience. In this partnership, the Voices of San Diego
yielded a $43,000 revenue level, which was 4 percent of their revenue that fiscal
year. Furthermore, The Bay Citizen had an syndicate partnership with the New
York Times, which allowed for them to gain exposure to nearly 65,000 email
subscribers. Syndication has shown and proven that it serves both as a
advertising revenue stream and as an opportunity to build and develop exposure
as well. The holistic goal and purpose of advertising is to create opportunities to
increase revenue but also to increase exposure to the product or brand as well.
With the proper balance, syndication does exactly that.
2.) Create partnerships with other Ad Networks: Ad Networks generally serve the
same purpose as the middle-man in an a transaction. They specifically connect
companies and organizations who want to advertise with those companies that
want to host advertisements. This is an advertising strategy that is starting to be
utilized more by online media agencies, as arguably the top competitor of Grist,
(Propublica) has recently signed a deal with an advertising network. One of the
most popular advertising networks is Google Adsense, which is a software
program ran by Google that helps connects advertisers to you through an
specific procedure. In addition, it allows you to choose your own ad format, the
location of your ads and then provides auction opportunities to advertisers for
that ad space on your website. There are several benefits to this; the main
benefit being that it reduces the amount of labor that has to be spent upon
reaching the same end goal that Ad Networks help you reach. Essentially, it
makes life more convenient, saves time and has the opportunity to reach more
advertisers. The process of reaching potential advertisers can take a significant
amount of time, labor and money and does not guarantee a deal. With an
advertising network such as Google Adsense, when companies start to bid for
the ad space on your website, you are guaranteed to reach a deal and
agreement; even creating opportunities to earn more than your initial asking price
based upon the demand and competition. Advertising networks provides an
certain level of exposure of your website and ad space to companies that is hard
to reach organically. Below is a chart pulled from emarketer.com which shows
the benefits that have been experienced in utilizing the services of an Ad
Network: which includes increased reach, flexible payment models, lower costs,
improved targeting, and time efficency.

9. 8
3.) The third recommendation that we would propose is to offer membership
programs with premium benefits and incentives. This is an advertising outreach
strategy that is currently being utilized by several competitors, including Texas Tribune
and ProPublica. Utilizing this advertising technique would mean that the target market
would be specifically towards donors and individuals who were planning to give. Texas
Tribune, offers several benefits for different membership levels that include a monthly
round up of the Tribune’s best material, an invitation to an annual cocktail party with
reporters, other exclusive events and other opportunities. A concern that may arise is
that Grist’s mission of providing everyone accessibility to their stories could be
compromised, however this option would not diminish that service already offered but
instead would only enhance it. A comparison that could be drawn is the promotional
campaign that 24 hour fitness offers; you can purchase a standard membership for a
fee, or a membership to their super club for an additional fee. This proposal would
follow the same module, that Grist would still offer the free subscription service, but offer
premiums and incentives with the paid subscription service, targeting the market that is
extremely dedicated towards reading the material of Grist. We believe that the
competitors that utilize this motivates not only donors to give, but to stay as a member
of their services and to continually give. This advertising strategy could prove to be
extremely beneficial, if the financial obligations of the membership benefits could create
a positive differentiation of profit.
4.) The fourth recommendation suggest to Grist would be: Invest into an
affordable Search Engine Optimization plan. The goal of any successful marketing

10. 9
strategy or campaign is to increase traffic and exposure, drive awareness and put a
product or service in front of the consumer’s eyes. One common concern that comes
with Search Engine Optimization is it’s affordability, as some premiums can run higher
than others. While this is true, Forbes magazine reported that SEO has one of the top
ROI ( Return on investment) in comparison to other marketing strategies and
campaigns. The top five benefits of Search Engine Optimization has been reported as:
significant increases in traffic, efficient return on investment, affordability, increased site
usability and brand exposure and awareness. Search Engine Optimization is a
procedure that puts your website at the top of the search engine results, which studies
have shown that sources at the top of the search engine results generate the highest
amount of impressions. Since Search Engine Optimization is an advertising strategy
that would be classified as an inbound strategy, it is a more cost-efficient strategy than
one that would be outbound. Studies have shown, that 61% of leads that are generated
from an outbound marketing strategy are more expensive than those generated from an
inbound strategy. Search Engine Optimization is an inbound marketing strategy that is
affordable, cost-efficient, increases traffic and brand exposure. Furthermore, Search
Engine Optimization also increases the usability of your website, which would also help
decrease the extremely high bounce rate that Grist is currently facing.
Summary of Recommendations: In summary; I sincerely believe that Grist should
look towards explore the route of syndication and unique partnerships, utilizing the
services of ad networks, offering premium membership packages as well as investing
into an affordable Search Engine Optimization plan. The mission of Grist has been and
remains clear: That everyone in the world has an opportunity to have exposure to the
most important topics that our world should be talking about. However, the reality is in
our world today; that diversifying revenue streams is something that is essential towards
continued growth in the business world. The Knight Foundation recently reported that
with the way the nonprofit world is rapidly shifting, and that in order for non-profit
companies to remain sustainable it is essential to diversify the revenue streams.
Advertising is a revenue stream that is slowly becoming heavily utilized by non-profit
media

11. 10
Conclusion:
For the last 17 years, Grist has served as one of the innovative news reporting
and journalism companies in the United States. Serving to provide the most detailed
and specific news stories pertaining to the wide variety of issues and topics that they
cover. Grist’s mission “ to be a beacon in the smog” proves to be prevalent in the work
that Grist does. Their goal is to serve as a source of “intelligent, irreverent
environmental news and commentary.” Covering a wide variety of topics, including
energy, climate, food, cities, politics, businesses and green living. One of the tools that
Grist utilizes is the Clarity-o-Meter, pointing readers to the most relevant news in the
industry. Grist releases a wide variety of news articles; allowing the reader to be
informed and to dive into a wide variety of topics.The recommendations that we have
suggested are to explore syndication and unique partnerships, as well as utilizing an ad
keyword software such as Google Adsense. Furthermore, a recommendation that we
have also proposed is the offering of memberships with premium memberships and
benefits based on the level of specific membership.
Fortunately, there is no beaten path towards finding strategies that increase
earned revenue through the advertising realm. Several of the leaders in this industry;
such as the Texas Tribune and Propublica have been utilizing unique strategies that
have proven to increase earned income through advertising. As these two industry
leaders and competitors have shown; utilizing advertising as another revenue source
can be done without creating an negative perception upon the “mission” of a non-profit.
Research has shown that one of the major concerns that nonprofits have when entering
into the earned income space is that it causes contradiction with the ideology that
nonprofits are not in business to earn revenue. However, earned income is extremely
beneficial as not only it allows for companies to diversify their revenue sources but in
most causes also provides the proper funding needed in order to serve the mission.
Utilizing earned income does not take away from the ideology of Nonprofits that “
Money should be a means to the end, not the end”. Instead, utilizing earned income
only increases the amount of means that one has in order to successfully meet their
mission and goals. Venturing bravely into new and exciting territories; one eye-opening
article at a time.
Sources:
"Ad Networks: The Real Advantages." ClickZ Ad Networks The Real
Advantages Comments. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
"AdSense." Learn How Works. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

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"Gaining Ground: How Nonprofit Ventures Seek Sustainability." Web.
"How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability." Knight Foundation.
Web.
"Knight Study: Syndication, Diverse Revenue Streams Make Non-Profit
News Sustainable." MediaShift Knight Study Syndication Diverse Revenue
Streams Make NonProfit News Sustainable Comments. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
"Nonprofit News Sites Need to Act More like Digital Businesses." Nonprofit
News Sites Need to Act More like Digital Businesses. Web. 22 Mar. 2016
"Top 5 Benefits of SEO." Top 5 Benefits of SEO. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
"Web Syndication Definition | Investopedia." Investopedia. 2009. Web. 22
Mar. 2016.
"What Is Blind Ad Network Definition ?" What Is Blind Ad Network
Definition : The Digital Marketing Glossary : Illustrated Terms and Definitions.
Web. 22 Mar. 2016.