Why Quartz eschews banner ads

Brian Morrissey of Digiday interviewed Quartz publisher Jay Lauf about the financial news site.

Morrissey said, “As an ad-dependent publication, Quartz faces the same tough market as other publishers. Lauf said the Quartz founding team, which included now Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and Lauf’s co-president and editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney, recognized this and crafted a premium ad business. It narrowed its launch partners to just four for the first year. It has never run standardized display, opting instead for full-screen custom units and content marketing. Quartz, which has 170 people and has been reported to have $30 million in annual revenue, boasts CPMs ’10 times the industry average’ at around $60 and boasts a 90 percent retention rate for the 180 advertisers it’s worked with.

“‘The thinking was, why are we going to replicate these banners and boxes that have very little value in the marketplace?’ he said. ‘You know they have little value because people don’t pay attention to them and as a result advertisers are paying miniscule rates for those banners and boxes. The only way then to make money is to sell millions more of these commoditized units. The only way to do that is a race to the bottom.’

“In digital media, Quartz is not large. Like many not in top rung of most-visited sites, Lauf dismisses ‘scale for scale’s sake.’ Still, audience size matters even within a focused vertical like the global business elite. In May, Quartz reached 9.2 million visitors, according to comScore.”

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