The Sun MD: In Digital Advertising “Less is More” and Experimenting is Key for Success

In this episode, Ben Walmsley, The Sun Managing Director and former Commercial Director of News UK / News Corp, discusses the monetisation strategy of a media brand.
The conversation touches several key topics:
- Internal alignment and a focus on digital transformation that can help media brands become more flexible and innovative.
- Reducing ad load and improving the quality of ads can enhance the user experience and increase ad unit value.
- reinventing content recommendation by building an internal solution and removing external widgets, and developing an entrepreneurial culture. He also talks about how and why News UK has created the role of head of consent and their approach to data and identity. The conversation highlights the importance of consent, collaboration, and aligning incentives in the media industry.
- Consent is a crucial metric that is directly correlated to revenue, and publishers should have a deliberate approach to consent and communicate the value exchange to users.
- Collaboration and alignment across teams and entities are important for driving innovation and achieving common goals.
- The media industry is facing instability and change, requiring publishers to think in new ways and adapt to technological advances.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro and the evolution of News UK
06:15 Entrepreneurialism: creating and acquiring new brands
11:01 Reinventing The Sun's advertising strategy after taking down the paywall. Reducing the ad load, increasing the quality of formats and the ad unit's value
16:29 Removing external content recommendation widgets, creating own content recirculation engine
19:16 A Test & Learn culture
22:23 Phasing out the old approach while adopting the new one
23:20 Consent and the “Head of Consent” role in the organisation
31:13 “Consent or Pay”
33:18 Alignment and collaboration across teams and countries in a big corporation like News UK / News Corp