Grow revenue, not ad load

Challenges 

As a publisher monetization partner operating across sports, entertainment, and enthusiast communities, Snack Media continuously explores modern monetization approaches that help publishers grow revenue while protecting engagement and user experience.

The objective was never to maximize ad load.

Instead, the team focused on identifying a monetization model that could:

• generate incremental revenue without increasing inventory pressure;
• monetize high-engagement moments more efficiently;
• remain additive to the existing advertising ecosystem;
• scale operationally across multiple publisher properties.

The challenge was finding a monetization approach that felt like a natural extension of the user journey rather than a disruptive advertising layer.

Introducing the Attention Layer

AdWall is Membrana's flagship product in the Attention Suite —built on rewarded advertising formats and attention-based monetization.

Rather than monetizing every pageview passively, the attention layer creates selective moments of active user engagement connected to premium advertiser demand.

In practice, users may choose to engage with advertiser experiences in exchange for continued content access.

The implementation was intentionally designed to remain:

• selective rather than universal;
• additive rather than replacement-based;
• configurable and reversible;
• low-frequency and operationally controlled.

Instead of maximizing coverage, the rollout prioritized monetization efficiency and long-term audience sustainability.

The initial deployment started conservatively on a limited number of pages before gradually expanding operationally across additional publisher properties over time.

Results

Rolled out gradually to roughly 30 publisher properties and around 700K daily pageviews: 

Average Performance Metrics

• Average effective CPM: $30
• Average audience coverage: 11–12%
• Average CTR: 15%
• Average consent rate: 50%+
• Video Completion Rate: 90%

Importantly, these results were achieved without materially increasing ad density or exposing the majority of users to the engagement layer.

Beyond monetization performance, the rollout also demonstrated that selective engagement monetization can scale progressively across a multi-site publisher portfolio while remaining operationally manageable from both UX and monetization perspectives.