CNN Brazil

Sérgio Maria, VP, Digital and Innovation

São Paulo, Brazil

CNN Prime Time com Marcio Gomes credito Kelly Queiroz

2024

CNN Brazil partners with Google to streamline the digital experience

When CNN Brazil started, the digital team needed to build the newsroom’s online presence from scratch. They partnered with Google to build an ad experience that boosted monetization while putting the focus on great journalism.

Building a newsroom from scratch

When American news brands are licensed in Brazil, local teams often already have a TV operation and news infrastructure in place that they can work from to get the organization off the ground. But CNN Brazil was different — it has to be built entirely from scratch.

While watching CNN on TV is still the primary choice for millions of consumers, the brand’s digital presence has gained a bigger share of the viewership over the years. So CNN Brazil’s digital team would need to get to work building out a digital operation in this new country and hopefully capture a large portion of Brazil’s news consumers.

“From the beginning, our digital partnership has been with Google,” says Sérgio Maria, VP, Digital and Innovation for CNN Brazil. “Our videos and live feed are on YouTube, which generates a lot of audience and revenue for us.”

With the digital presence drawing such a devoted following, Sérgio and his team started to think about the best ad strategy for their website. From the get-go, CNN Brazil embraced Google Ad Manager, which would help the team as they embarked on two key goals: improving the user experience and generating revenue.

CNN Prime Time com Marcio Gomes credito Kelly Queiro

An ambitious digital revamp

Initially, CNN Brasil's digital monetization strategy was very complicated. Eleven different technologies were running on the site at the same time, making the user experience slow and frustrating. So, the first action was to simplify around a single tool that would make it easier to manage ad spaces and measure results. Next, Sérgio and his team decided to create a new homepage, which they hoped would give a better presentation of its content and present the most important news more clearly. To make these important design decisions, they looked at benchmarks of good user experiences, and then went about implementing them.

“By doing this, we improve the user experience, reduce revenue cannibalization and create more unique visits with better revenue results”, highlighted Sérgio.

_ISABELLA SCHERER e Mari Palma na Palma da Mari

News readers feel the difference

“First, we saw a big impact in the number of unique visitors on the site, and this has been growing ever since,” says Sergio. “Best of all, the revenue has improved a lot. Today the average CPM is three times higher than it was before the redesign.”

And on the ad strategy side of things, CNN Brazil is able to offer a more diverse, optimized ad inventory. The site’s ad inventory is six times larger than it was prior to the rebuild — and partners are happy to see users interacting with their ads.

“We started having a weekly working meeting with Google where we discussed how to optimize inventory,” says Sergio. “The volume of inventory delivery is higher and with more quality. And we’ve also managed to improve the viewability of this inventory. Plus, we’ve doubled our page views year-over-year, which is great news for our ad partners.”

Sergio is also proud of the collaborative relationship he and his team have been able to develop with their partners at Google.

“This partnership is fundamental for us,” says Sergio. “Their technical knowledge helps us uncover so many key insights, good practices, and valuable features. It's no use having a good tool and not knowing how to use it, right? So having a weekly cadence, where we review all the metrics with Google has helped us make the most of their ad platform.”

“This partnership is fundamental for us. Google's technical knowledge helps us uncover so many key insights, good practices, and valuable features.”

Quality journalism, quality ads

CNN Brazil isn’t ready to run just any old ad messaging. After all, this is a team that breaks important news stories, which readers rely on to better understand the world.

“The last thing we want is for users to read two lines of an article then have the rest blocked by a pop-up,” says Sergio. “That shows a lack of respect to the reader, as well as the journalist who took the care to investigate and write that story. It also shows a lack of respect for the brands who chose to pay to be there.”

Cleaning up their ad strategy wasn’t without some fears. After all, they would have to decrease the overall volume of ads on the site, at least temporarily. “Our teammate at Google said we were very brave to embark on such a strategy,” says Sergio. But they were there to help — and ensured that just because volume was being cut didn’t mean inventory or quality had to shrink. In fact, both grew.

“Initially we said, ‘Okay, we’re going to lose revenue for six months’ as we improve ads,” says Sergio. “But we were happy to see revenue come back much sooner — in less than three months we were already able to make up the revenue.”

Along the way, CNN Brazil has gotten to focus on doing what they do best: promoting great journalism. From a presentation at the Google News Initiative to new AI tools that help journalists work smarter and faster, CNN Brazil is using their strong monetization strategy to take on new projects and improve their existing product.

“We’re trying to always simplify the lives of the journalists so that they can focus on reporting,” says Sergio. “And with these new initiatives in place, the newsroom is very excited.”

About the Publisher

Sérgio Maria has worked in senior positions at companies such as Google and Globo, where he was executive director of digital advertising products and led the deepest transformation of the company's advertising portfolio. With a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, he has a Master's degree in Communication Management, adding to the brand the expertise in using the best tools and technology for media, in work that aims to expand and consolidate the multiplatform DNA that characterizes CNN Brasil's strategy.