The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 136. What Bloggers Need to Know About 3rd Party Cookies

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

We are talking all things 3rd party cookies on this episode! In this episode, we have Tiffany Graves and Ben Rodriguez on from Mediavine. They explain 3rd party cookies and their role in target advertising. Ben shares more about Mediavine’s Grow platform and we talk about the importance of privacy and adapting to a more privacy-centric web. We know that this episode is going to be helpful and we would love to hear what you thought about it!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsCheck out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode136

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinke and Jennifer Draper. We are on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you are just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we are excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging and work from home life,

all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. We are really passionate here about making sure that you have the right information to make the best possible decision for your blogs, and also understand really what is happening. And today we are going to dive into this very interesting topic of third party cookies. And we have two experts from Mediavine with us today. We have Ben Rodriguez and Tiffany Graves. And I am really excited just to jump right into this conversation with Ben and Tiffany. So welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, guys.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Yes. So Tiffany and Ben both work for Mediavine. and I would love for you each to just introduce yourselves and kind of share with our community what your role is at Mediavine. Okay, cool. As you said, my name is Tiffany. I have been with Mediavine for, I just crossed over my fifth year. I am a Premier Account Manager. so I work primarily with our Premier Publishers, who if you are not familiar with that, those are our highest earning publishers and they earn 500,000 or more yearly in ad revenue.

So those are pretty big sites. I am super passionate about digging into data with publishers and geeking out on ad tech things and talking about third party cookies. So yeah, I'm really excited to be here. Awesome. Glad to have you. And I am Ben.

I am a month shy of two years with Mediavine. So that is pretty exciting. And I am a support specialist. So if you write in to your dashboard chat or to our email support, you will probably talk to me if you have grow questions. I am always in the grow inbox. Now that grow has a community, I also troubleshoot a lot in the grow community as well for non-media vine publishers.

So I am constantly looking at how to use grow, how to get the most out of grow and how to improve its current features. That's awesome. That's a product that we are definitely very excited about as well. So glad to be able to dive into that. I know we've talked about that on the podcast before, but we're excited to talk about it from this perspective, too. Okay, so we're here today to talk about third party cookies and what this means to bloggers. But before we even dive into that, I think we have some people here who are like, what kind of cookies are we talking about? So can we just go over a basic level explanation of third party cookies

and what they mean for bloggers? For sure. For sure. Okay. So third party cookies are small bits of data that are dropped into your browser as you surf the web. They're not going to know your name. They don't know your financial information, so it's nothing scary, but they sort of create a profile around your interests, the things that you frequent, the things you might shop for, the things you might be interested in.

And then advertisers can then use that data to target ads that are relevant to you. So for example, let's say I'm shopping for shoes. I might start at DSW and I might narrow it down to say, okay, I wanna buy tennis shoes. And then I might narrow it down even further to say, I wanna buy a specific pair of tennis shoes. And then I might go price check those exact same shoes across several sites. That's sort of adding to that profile that I'm interested

in not only shoes, but a very specific type and perhaps a very specific manufacturer model or whatever. So let's say that I maybe don't purchase and I go on to other things. I personally have ADHD, so that happens all of the time. And I am then on a completely unrelated website. I might be looking for recipes or I might be reading the news. And then suddenly I see an ad that's the literal exact same pair of shoes I was looking at a few days ago. And before I worked in ad tech, I thought that was magic. I was like, how did they know? How did they know that I was looking at their shoes? Well, they know

because of cookies. So the reason why that is important for bloggers is because they play a very pivotal role in the advertising ecosystem, right? So if we sort of look at it from an advertiser's perspective, if I'm a brand and I want to get my brand in front of the eyeballs of readers, I want to know that I'm going to have a really good ROI. So if I have a lot of data and I know that I can put that shoe ad in front of somebody that not only may be my target demographic, maybe not just somebody who's interested in shoes in general, but somebody that I know is interested in exactly what I'm trying to have them buy, then I'm going to be very competitive in getting that ad in front of them.

So if you think about it sort of like an ecosystem, we have the cookies, give the advertisers the data they need to give you targeted ads. From a reader's perspective, it's just a better experience. I'm seeing ads that are relevant to me. I know this has happened to me countless times where I see an ad and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. I'm going to head back over to that, go buy those shoes I forgot about because I squirreled and did a hundred different other things in the meantime. And then as content creators and publishers, you benefit from that relationship because you are providing the audience. It is your platform that is sort of facilitating that relationship. So that's what cookies are and that's why they're important.

You described that very well. I just think you described that very well. I think it's something that can feel like Honestly, it can feel a little creepy if you're like looking at something and you're like they're like watching everything I do So thank you for sharing that they don't have access to like our financial information No, I think that that's important. Just think that's important just to note across the board Yes, it is definitely important context. And you know, if you clear your cookies, you're once again anonymous, they're stored on your

browser, right? And that's why if you clear your cookies, which I personally hate doing, because then I have to go log in to all of my things again. But that's how websites remember who you are, right? Like you may go to a website and you're already logged in, or you go to a website and you may not be logged in, but they have sort of pre-filled your login information. So it's your browser talking to that website and saying, hey, this is the same person that was here last time. And so it's just that you sort of have that profile but then advertisers also have access to that

same information. Yeah. And like you said, our platforms, our blogs are helping the internet and advertisers do that. So we are obviously going to be impacted when third-party kickies change. So there are some impacts that we have been hearing about. And so what are some of those impacts that bloggers are going to have when this shift changes? And what is the shift that's happening? Yeah, that's a great question. So obviously, if there's a profile, I'm going to use the word profile. That's not what it is, but that's the easiest way that I can understand it. So

if there's this information, this data that's being collected as you surf the web, it has sparked some privacy concerns, most probably famously things like GDPR, CCPA, and there's more and more privacy laws that are coming out every day. And so it's really caused the industry as a whole, everybody that's on the internet, you know, browsers, advertisers, everybody to really look at what that means for privacy and sort of shift more towards a privacy centric web, which as a consumer, I think is really important, you know. So Chrome, when we talk about cookies going away, we're not talking about like we're being very specific. So the Chrome browser has a majority of the

market share, I think the last I checked it was 60 or 65% of the market. Safari has already gotten rid of third party cookies. So they're like, they're not even in the mix. And we're talking about getting rid of the rid of cookies. We're talking specifically about Chrome. So Google, they announced, I guess, four, three, four years ago that they were going to get rid of third-party cookies over time. They've delayed that rollout a few times, but we're basically at the endpoint here. So since most of the internet, 60-something percent, is on Chrome, when they get rid of cookies, that's going to have a very large impact.

Things that we're looking at. Okay, so let's go back to the example with shoes. If I'm an advertiser and I no longer have access to that data, then I'm probably going to be a little bit more conservative with how I spend my budgets. If I'm looking at somebody that's completely anonymous, I have nothing on them, they may be somebody that's interested in my shoes or they may be somebody that is not even in my target market. And so, it makes it more difficult for advertisers to spend with confidence, and it makes it

to where it's going to be not quite as, you know, they're not going to be as easy, as aggressive, I'll put it that way, to say, yes, that is the person I want to put my ad in front of. That is, you know, that's my target. And so as content creators will be impacted by that. Because if it's our audience and we are then making the money on those ads, if advertisers are not spending as much, then we're not going to make as much. And the same for readers. If you're not going to have the same personalized experience, you might get toe fungus cream ads. We don't know.

I mean, it could be very random, which I don't love that. I think ads are important. They're important for content creators to continue to give away content for free. And I think it's an important thing. But again, balancing that with doing things in a privacy centric way. Yeah. And I know that this is going to have a big impact on bloggers who do earn a significant portion of their revenue from this advertising. So I think it feels scary and probably rightfully

so to some extent to be concerned about the impact of this. And I know that you guys have been working behind the scenes and working on things. And I know we're going to talk about that. But before we go there, you know, what level of concern should we have as bloggers right now and what kinds of things should we be doing to prepare for this, if anything? So I think backing up just a minute, I mean, the industry, it's not that there are no solutions. OK, so it is not that there is nothing to sort of offer advertisers information that will get them what they need. Right. So just speaking for Mediavine, kind of what we're doing, we are looking at different strategies for different types of readers.

So completely anonymous readers, for example, may get targeted based on the keywords in the post, right? And that's called contextual art advertising. So it may not be necessarily relate, you may not see ads related to things you've seen on another site, but you might see ads related to what you're currently reading. So if it's a recipe, you might get, you know, craft

or, you know, whatever. So that it's a recipe, you might get, you know, craft or, you know, whatever. So that would be a completely anonymous user. Those are sort of technologies that are sort of filling in the gaps. And then we have other things like, you know, collecting first party data that readers have specifically said, I give you permission to serve me personalized ads. And those readers will monetize at a higher rate. So it is not that this is the end. It is not that this is anything that should be scary. I think, like I said, I think a privacy-centric web is important. The industry, the ad industry is really coming together to find a lot of solutions so that

whenever cookies do go away, we have a bunch of different options when it comes to what the market needs and what they're asking for, what advertisers are asking for. So I don't necessarily think it's something that we need to panic and say, this is the end. But I do think it's something that needs to be on your radar. And I think that, you know, working with us, working with Mediavine, we have a proprietary solution that adds to the things that the industry is already doing, you know, and that's only with us, right? So, you know, I think having it on your radar and making

decisions about like who you partner with and, you know, making those choices, it needs to be on radar, but it doesn't need to be a scary end of the world, my blog is over type of a situation. Yeah, there's always room for a gray area and to learn. We don't, I think we live in a black and white society. So having kind of just the intuition that there's going to be a solution and it might look different than what we're currently doing,

but that there is a solution that we can do. I do want to back up Tiffany and ask you a question based on something that you just said. And that's for a reader to opt in to receive those personalized ads. So that is going to be an option. Is that what you meant by that? That's an option now. So there are features through Grow, specifically like Spotlight Subscribe, and I'll let Ben speak more to this. He's definitely the Grow expert, but there are features that readers can offer their email address. For instance, if they

sign up for your newsletter, in addition to that, there will be, I sign up for the newsletter, but I also consent to be served personalized ads. And there's other features within Grow too, where readers can say, yes, I want this thing, whether it's exclusive content or whatever else, but I also consent to personalized ads. So it's really the readers taking back control of what data they share and where, which again, as a reader ourselves and as consumers, that's a good thing. But it's just finding, making sure we're sort of maintaining that balance. Okay. So let's kind of dive into Grow a little bit. We had Heather Toulouse on the podcast as well, kind of talking about

grow and journey. But I think that this is just something that we find really important. It's something that we are encouraging our students to make sure that they are utilizing in order to prep themselves and prep their blogs, because we do work with a lot of beginner and intermediate bloggers. And so getting on an ad network and getting to that 50,000 sessions, it can take a while. And I actually think that what Mediavine has come out with with Grow is kind of an answered prayer for a lot of people in order to get on an ad network sooner. So Ben, can you kind of dive into what Grow is and how it is supporting people who are kind of more at the front end of their blogging

journey, but also how it can support established bloggers who are already on an ad network and already earning ad revenue. Absolutely. Essentially, Grow is an engagement suite. It has a ton of different features that are designed to help your readers more personalize their experience on your site with different features like recommended content, subscribed forms, the search experience. But what it really is, is a first party data solution. We are asking publishers to put it on their site and through your subscribed forms, exclusive content widgets, print pass, and a new feature for Mediavine publishers called Smart Lock,

we ask readers to submit their email address into these features. And when they submit their email address, they are agreeing to receiving emails from you. So it helps you develop that personal connection to your readers and get return traffic coming, but it also allows us to obtain the consent for the first party data collection.

And then we can use that data to serve personalized ads, increase ad revenue on your site. And then different ways you interact with Grow, build that first party data. So it's not all built on that email address. Once the email address is there, if they click on an auto mailer link that goes to your site, it helps show our advertisers, helps build that profile that lets them see, oh, they're interested in this, they're interested in this, they're interested in, you know, chews, macaroni and cheese, and Hondas, maybe, for one person.

And so then Honda, Kraft, and DSW know we can serve ads to this person and they'll be probably pretty targeted, pretty tailored to this person's interests. What Grow does beyond that as well, besides the first party data, is authenticates your traffic. So, if a reader creates a Grow account, it saves all that Grow activity in their Grow

account. They can bookmark posts they like. Clicks that they've registered through the links are saved to their email address. And so, the advertiser can then see if that ad was effective. So, Honda served that ad to this person and then Honda says, oh, they clicked on it, they looked at it, maybe they didn't buy the car, but they compared it to another model. So it gives the advertiser that return on investment data that lets them know, oh, that ad was effective. So then they'll spend more on that person the next time they

serve them an ad. So it kind of takes the first party data, the good ad spend for the targeted ad and ramps it up a little bit more for the authenticated traffic. So it's helping you build a relationship, not just with your reader, but between your reader and the advertisers as well, helping them personalize their experience across the whole internet. And that's probably really fast and really high level. One really interesting thing is the information that, you know, the data that we have on on grow data so far is that CPMs are not only, you know, matching what we have with third party data now, they're actually exceeding it.

So CPMs are first party data or authenticated traffic are on average about two times what we're seeing with third party cookies now. So there's a lot of potential there. There's a lot of potential to not only maintain what you're making now with third-party cookies, but even potentially make more with Grow because that authenticated traffic is extremely valuable, even more so than third-party cookie traffic. It's going to be a small slice of your traffic because obviously

not everybody's going to make a Grow account. Not everybody's going to go to that level. But those that do monetize on average about two times higher CPMs. So what makes Grow unique is among all first-party data solutions, it shares that first-party data it collects across all users using Grow. The consent doesn't lie on just your individual website, it lies with Grow itself. So if I subscribe to a subscribe forum on Amy's site and consent to personalized ads,

I can go to Jennifer's site and still get those personalized ads as long as she's using Grow and I don't have to subscribe to her at all, I don't have to submit my email address. Grow has saved it. We keep the consent for you. We make sure Grow is in line with privacy regulations

worldwide so that we can control that. And you don't have to really think about the scary legal parts of it. That is interesting. Yeah. And we wanna make it easy. Yeah, like how is this all going to work together? That was my question.

So that makes sense. Now, from the reader perspective, you mentioned if they click on an ad, is that the way that the engagement is measured? Are there any other ways that can they just see the ad? Is it the same as it was before where they only had to see ads? Or do they actually have to engage with the ads, I guess, is my question. It still works the same as it was before where they only had to see ads or do they actually have to engage with the ads? I guess is my question.

It still works the same way. So ad impressions, just seeing the ad for that amount of time is still what gets you paid, still what advertisers are looking for. A number of impressions still matters. Clicks and engagement are also going to be good metrics for them too, but the impression is the important part. We still want it to be seen and visible, and that will count for you. So you don't have to stress and think, oh, no, people aren't clicking and now I have to think about, actually, don't worry about that. That's the advertisers

worrying about. Right. So that's to get too big into the weeds here, but that is what Ben's talking about as far as when they click through. If they click through an ad and make a sale, then that's what's called attribution, right? So then that goes back to the advertiser and they say, okay, not only was this successful, not only did this serve to somebody that was relevant to my campaign, but it actually resulted in a conversion, right? So those are metrics that we're able to pass on to advertisers too, and they're able to

track with authenticated traffic to know not only, yes, this got in front of the eyeballs of a relevant person, but that same person then went and purchased. So to me, this kind of feels almost, dare I say, that it could end up being better for advertisers and better for content creators, because advertisers are actually going to know, they're going to have a clearer picture of what we're interested in and what we're actually clicking on. But yet at the same time, us as a consumer, we are more protected. Our content, or I'm sorry, our data is more protected, like who we are, where we are, and all those things.

Right. So I don't know. That's just, I guess I'm feeling a little encouraged listening to you both. And I don't know if that's across the board guess I'm feeling a little encouraged listening to you both. I don't know if that's across the board, but I know that just what you're sharing, that's how I'm feeling that this seems more, it does seem more targeted. Tiffany, I kind of appreciate what you're saying about the whole experience as well. I've never really thought about ads that way. Right. But like, when you get like kind of like, like obtrusive, like, kind of like, I liked your example of toe fungus,

like, I don't deal with, I don't deal with that. I'm sure that some people do. And so they would be very thankful for that ad, but like I don't want to necessarily see a toe fungus ad. And so like, if we don't have something kind of like, I don't know, refining what we're seeing, it can feel a little bothersome. So I think that we have to kind of shift our mindset in regards to what ads are. And as content creators, we know this, we understand the importance of ads, obviously,

that way we can continue to be producing free content. But a lot of people don't. So I think just making that, I don't want to say that voice a little louder, but maybe that voice a little louder for the people who are consuming the content to really understand this is why, you know, you're being served ads. So these content creators can continue providing free content to you. Like all you're having to do really is give them your email address. And then you get all this content. Yeah. And that's why Grow has a lot of really cool features too, right? So it's incentivizing

readers to want to do those things. And that's why everything to me kind of goes back to building relationships with your readers, writing reader-centric content. That's what Google wants. That's what readers want, but also if you're building those relationships with really good content, then they will be more apt to take you up on that offer of, I'll give you my email address for something in return. It all works together. One question that I do get a lot that I wanted to mention is, what if my readers aren't engaged with Grow? What then, like what then? So I think it's also really important to highlight that Mediavine is advocating on your behalf

as well in the industry. We are going to, you know, we have meetings with the Chrome team. We are helping them work out the things that they are offering as solutions. Even most recently, if you've heard of the privacy sandbox, that's something that we are testing that is Chrome's sort of answer for the end of cookies for advertisers. And, you know, we've tested some of those APIs and found that there's some issues with them. And we took that feedback back to the Chrome team, and they took that feedback and they're working on it. So it's not just grow. Grow is hugely important, but we are, you know, we're advocating for you in the industry, Mediavine publishers, you know, which actually benefits the entire industry, right? We're, we're, we're being a loud voice for everybody because it does take everybody in addition to, you know, working on things like grow, but also working on things that we can partner with partners we can work with that have identity solutions outside of Grow to still make sure we're getting some sort of privacy centric information to

pass along to advertisers. So we have several, several, several things in the mix that advertisers can choose from, that readers can choose from when it comes to how they want to engage with your site and engage with the site running Mediavine ads. Yeah. One thing that's been running through my mind as we've been talking about this is this is kind of opening up some opportunity for us as content creators in some ways because of the tools like Grow that you've created to, you know, create that deeper connection with

our audience. So I think we could see that as a potential opportunity. And I know I've only just done the top level of what Grow can do. I've put the spotlight subscribe form on my website and had great luck with it. It's such a nice form that people see, but it doesn't bother them. They're not trying to click out of it. They're actually signing up at a higher rate for that. And I've been able to connect with my audience a little bit more

and email back and forth with some of them. And so I think that, you know, continuing to see it from that perspective will be important. And I'd like you to talk a little bit more about some of the things that we could do as a blogger to entice people to make that connection, to sign up, to become a part of our community so that we can get that first party data. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of to tie it a little bit back into what Tiffany was talking about before, we are working

on so many different things behind the scenes to help ensure that we are protecting reader privacy but still protecting publisher ad revenue. And so Grow is a really good way for you to have something hands on to do on your own site. That makes you feel like you have more of a say in the process, more participation in it, and to kind of give you more control over how it looks on your site. Because a lot of it is, you know, us talking to Google and saying, Hey, this doesn't work for our publishers, which can, you know, make you feel hopeless, because you're like, that's out of my hands. That's I know, I trust Mediavine, I trust what they're doing,

but it's really important to take ownership of the privacy as well. And the first party data solution. So we looked at a lot of our top earning sites with Grow. Hopefully we'll have publisher analytics available for Grow very soon. People ask for it all the time. They've been working on it.

It's just a really big thing for our engineering team to build. So it's taken longer than some easier things like new subscribe forms or new looks for things that we can push out quickly and solve. But we do have data kind of on our end that shows high level, how Grow is performing, how some big sites might be performing with it. And so we did create best practices guides available in the Grow Help Center, even by niche, because food blogs, it's historically hard to convert readers on food blogs. They're coming create best practices guides available in the Grow Help Center, even by niche. Because food blogs, it's historically hard to convert readers on food blogs.

They're coming from Google Search, making the recipe bouncing, printing the recipe bouncing. So we want to create different solutions that help you prioritize that. So if you guys have a family and parenting blog, a food blog, a travel blog, a hobbies and interests blog, we have niche guides for you specifically to help you use Grow in the best way possible on your site. And then a more generic best practices. In general, though, an email opt-in is always the best answer. It's always the best way to get your readers connected to you. You have a newsletter. If you don't have a newsletter,

Grow has AutoMailer, which sends automated weekly newsletters to your readers. It rounds up your most recent posts and then recommended content tailored to each individual subscriber based on how they've interacted with Grow and other things on your site every week. You don't have to do anything. You turn it on and that's it. Like super, super hands off, super easy.

But then if you do have an email strategy, we can integrate Grow and its subscribe forms with your email service provider, either directly or with Zapier, to send Grow subscribers through. We always recommend, and the most successful Grow sites are always making the subscribe form as specific as possible. If you have Spotlight subscribed, pop up subscribe, click to subscribe, whatever form type we have that you decided you want on your site. Making it a personal invitation to your readers

is the best way to get them to subscribe to your content. Let them know how often you'll email them, what will be included in the newsletter. If there's a free opt-in that you're offering them, like an e-cookbook or a PDF guide, something like that, letting them know that's included will entice them to actually submit their email to you. If you have supplemental materials like printables or PDFs, ebooks, anything like that, we have exclusive content where you can embed that in your site and then lock that specific file with the exclusive content. So maybe you have a substitution guide underneath your recipe card, lock that with exclusive content and get those readers who need vegan you know, need vegan or gluten free options instead of what you have in your standard

recipe to download that and then, you know, opt into your email list, first party data collection that way. So just as making it as personal as possible and adding the added benefit is going to be the best option. And then if you're sitting there thinking, well, nobody subscribes to my newsletter, my content doesn't really work that way. I don't have supplemental things. Just install Grow and put on the What's Next on mobile recommended content widget. It is one little thing that pops up at the bottom right or left corner of the mobile screen that shows the people the most likely posts they would read next based on what they're currently reading. There are sites that have nothing on their site at all,

but that one feature that have increased revenue by $10,000. So it can just be one little thing from benefiting from other people who have grow accounts landing on your site and getting that additional ad revenue from their traffic. That can really make a huge difference. I mean, I could do extra $10,000. Maybe it sounds like a small change to you, but to me, that would be like a really good student loan payment. Yeah, I'll take it. So that's incredible. And my next question is, because I'm sure that people are asking,

is there a fee to use Grow? So is this, it's a plugin that you're gonna put on your site, but do they have to pay for it? No, it's totally free. Free for any publisher. You don't have to be with Mediavine for Mediavine ads. You don't have to be on Journey yet because you actually have to install Grow to use Journey. It's available for any site that can install scripts

into the head section of their HTML. So if you don't have WordPress, you've got Squarespace, Blogger, Self-Build-It. We have tons of different ways to install it. The Grow Help Center has guides for all of those. And if you are on WordPress, it's just Grow for WordPress as the plugin, super easy to install. You can set it up and then sign up for Grow right in your WP admin without actually having to go anywhere else. To learn more about Mediavine Journey, you can go back and listen to Episode 125 that we did with Heather Toulouse. But I think this is just an incredible tool that I want to challenge you, if you're listening to this, to download it and use it. Because even just the recommended, like what you just shared, like the recommended, that is just keeping people

on our sites. And that's in the day and age that everybody is like, literally like a squirrel and like a pinball machine. And we have so many things like trying to capture our attention. It is, we have to be able to kind of think outside the box and ask ourselves, how do we keep people on our site? How do we keep serving the people that are already here?

How do we keep showing them content that is relevant to what they're searching for? And that is an amazing opportunity, just that one simple change in order to serve them. And it's free, like it's free. Yeah, it's free. Yeah, and has been, and since I know a lot of your audiences either just getting started or sort of, you know,

very new in their journey. He mentioned Auto Mailer. I just want to talk about that for a minute because it's very, very cool. You know, I know that can feel very overwhelming, right? Like not only do I have to create content, not only do I have to do keyword research, but I also have to come up with, you know, a newsletter. Oh my gosh. So that's a feature that works even if you're not serving any ads, right?

Like you can turn it on, you can subscribe, put in the subscribe form, turn that on and you're good to go. And that's one less thing that you have to worry about. You can always circle back if you decide to create a newsletter later, if that's something you want to add to your workflow. But in the interim, get those email addresses, right? Start forming those relationships. Start being more present in their inbox so they can remember, oh yeah, this was a great recipe. I'm going to go back to that site, right?

Because it helps you build traffic. So yeah, Auto Mailer is a great one for people who are just starting on their journey, even if they're not serving ads yet. And it's like most growth features, all you do is click a couple of switches. You don't have to put a ton of code in your site. You don't have to like put a ton of code in your site. You don't have to do a ton of hard work. You literally go to the setting in the menu, turn it on and click save, and then it will be on your site.

You don't have to stress about it. It's super easy. And then if you do have a robust mailing list already, if you're kind of intermediate and you think, well, that sounds cool for somebody that doesn't have a mailing list, but I don't think it would really work for me. We have other features as well. We just launched email connect, email connect lets you use a grow URL. So if you go on your site, and you use the copy link button, it grabs a short code to that post with a grow URL. The

grow URL can check against grows database and see if this person on any site using grow has entered their email address at any time. If they have, it will rehydrate their email address. And so the first party data starts coming again, even if the session's expired. If they have logged out of their Grow account, it will authenticate that traffic by you logging them in without them having to worry about it. So that's really cool. And then it also can identify your email service provider newsletter subscribers as well.

So if you've got ConvertKit and you add this special tag that only works in ConvertKit newsletters, it will privately hash that email address into that link when they click it. So it can't be seen by anybody. It just goes through the URL and identifies them and grow. It doesn't leak it to the dark web or anything crazy like that. It protects their privacy. If they opt out of privacy features with your privacy consent, it will take that out. So it will honor everything that they're doing with their privacy settings. But it will then serve them more personalized ads. It's not quite as good as if they had opted in themselves, but it can still utilize them since you're thinking they're not going

to subscribe again. they're already subscribed. Well, it can monetize them better for you than they currently are being just by clicking that link. This is mind blowing. Yeah, so many amazing features. I know that sounds crazy, but you can use the copy link button in the grow widget. You don't have to like manually build these crazy links. You can go there, choose convert kit, and then it will let you copy the whole link button in the grow widget. You don't have to like manually build these crazy links. You can go there, choose convert kit,

and then it will let you copy the whole link. You just paste it right into your newsletter. I mean, you're pasting links in anyway, right? Like you might as well just use a different one and get more revenue from that. So yeah, there's a lot of really incredible features. So all good things. I think even training somebody who's not already,

you know, on Mediavine to just start doing that, to where when you are generating ad revenue, like all these systems are already in place. So I know when you start your blog and like you're doing all the things and you're like, I really wish I could get paid, like all the things. It's kind of like setting that foundation. We talk about the foundation all the time. And email marketing is very, very important to us.

It's something that we talk about all the time. And that that voice is getting louder and louder and louder, especially this whole third party cookie thing. I think people are finally starting to understand like email marketing and building your email list is super duper important. Huge. And so I love that Grow really comes alongside

and recognizes the importance of that because that's something that us as blog coaches are really trying to help them understand as well. That for sure. I know that some people think like, well, I get a million emails a day, but like that is how you stay relevant. That is how you stay in front of your audience. You know, you have more control over that than you have over your social media. And

so really, like don't don't miss that. And the way that grow can come alongside and support that I find to be really encouraging and gives us a lot of hope in, in this arena right now. Absolutely. And you can also just use it as a traffic builder to be perfectly honest. You know, I know specifically print pass and also there's, so if you go on our help docs, you can see it's sort of in action, but the subscribe form has an option you can add that makes it a little bit sticky as you scroll, right? So it'll go to the top of the page and it'll stick for just a few seconds

and then it'll keep going. It's called InView for subscribe. That's a feature that has skyrocketed signups. I won't give a percentage because I don't want to lie. I don't have it in front of me, but I know that publishers have gotten in front of me and said, oh my God, I've just so multiplied my signups just by adding the little sticky feature and prep pass as well. I've had a lot of feedback where people are like, oh my goodness, you know, my signups are phenomenal. So even if you just look at it as like, you know, I'm in the beginning of my journey and I need to be building my list, I need to be generating traffic. It's an easy no brainer, you know, couple of toggles and you are good to go. It's one less thing to worry about.

And it's really optimizing your time because it's one less thing to worry about and it's really optimizing your time because it's one less thing you have to spend time trying to figure out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can give the number, I do know that. Oh yeah. So Spotlight Subscribe, for those that don't know, is a subscribe form that's in content.

When the user scrolls past it, it darkens the screen around it. So it kind of has the attention grab of a pop-up form without the annoying pop-ups, you have to close all that. So people like it because it still draws attention, but as you scroll, the screen comes back to normal and people can ignore it if they want to. That sees about a 40% increase in conversion rates

over the standard in content subscribe form. When you enable the in view effect, which is what Tiffany talked about, where it sticks in a little window and scrolls with the reader until it's kind of at the top and then it goes away, that can increase that by another 40%. So we have seen some huge increases on conversion rates for Spotlight Subscribe with in-view effect. And then print pass that she mentioned works if you have tasty, create, or WordPress recipe maker, creator, recipe, or how-to cards. If you click the print button in the recipe card, a little widget will pop up on the print

recipe screen or the print instruction screen for your how-to card that says, hey, before you print, please subscribe to my email list. And you subscribe and then you can print. And it will do that on every single recipe or how-to instruction page on your site until that person creates a Grow account. Because the Grow account saves their emails so then Grow knows, oh, they've already submitted their email, we're not going to do this again. But that way, those readers that come from a search result

immediately print, print people are not likely to come back to your site, they're printing it to save for later. We have increased their traffic, so if they land on your site from someone else's site, from another search result, if they come back to your site because they've subscribed and now they're getting your newsletter, their traffic is going to be monetized better than it was previously. Genius. Genius. And people have reported, you know, turning that on for a week and getting 300 new subscribers in just a week. So that, you know, is capturing a ton of people, maybe not returned users, but if they're landing

on someone else's site and you guys are both using Grow, then that benefits everybody. Yeah. Why not test it out? I mean, I think that that's the encouragement here is you can test it out and see, see what it does for you. Try the different features because, you know, we all have different audiences. But I think that the idea here is that we're just really trying to offer an authentic connection, authentic value to our audience.

And this is a tool that can help us do that while also helping us as bloggers, as content creators with our revenue streams. Exactly. And if it doesn't work, if your readers complain, if you just think you don't like it anymore, you turn it off and click save and that features turn off. Yeah. Okay. That's good to know too. Because it is good to test things out and see how it's working for you.

Exactly. We recommend that all the time. And Jennifer and I are pretty good at not recommending like every plugin known to man, because that can really pull down your site. And so if we're going to recommend a plugin, then it's going to be one that we believe in and we really think is for the good of your blog in general and your blog business. So we will put links to grow in the show notes. My hope is that as you listen to this episode,

one, you were educated on third-party cookies and what that really means. And then two, how an ad network like Mediavine is empowering you to take control, take a little bit more control over not just your audience, but your revenue. I do think that that is a possibility and potentially looking at this new Grow plugin

and seeing how it can benefit your blog. So we will put a link in the show notes that will direct you to Grow so you can learn more and you can get that downloaded and try. And Tiffany and Ben, thank you so much for coming today and try. Tiffany and Ben, thank you so much for coming today and sharing. I think it's been a very, very helpful episode. Awesome. Thank you so much for having us. We had a great time.

Yes, thank you. We had fun. Yay. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp.

The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.