Promote Your Game on TechRaptor - Launching a New Ad Format

From Rutledge Daugette, founder and CEO of TechRaptor:

Media is a tough industry – we're constantly competing for readers’ eyeballs, to sell advertising that pays for the articles you consume every day. Every site does it, and to varying levels of success. Many abuse ads, and drive users to adblock every site – leading towards publishers needing to find new ways to monetize the content that is free to their readership.

As TechRaptor seeks to adjust to this changing landscape, starting June 5, we'll be offered a new type of advertising to our site - Promoted Game/Product Slots.

Changing with the Times

TechRaptor has grown immensely in the last few years, and we’ve been proud of what we’ve built and grown into, but the landscape has been incredibly challenging in 2023.

I pride myself on taking great care of my people and outpaying competitors 10 times our size – it's my number 1 concern as we grow. We’ve been blessed to not ever need to decrease pay, having only increased it over the last 10 years, and my goal is to continue that without hampering the reader experience.

With recent, and upcoming, challenges related to search traffic and reduction of views by platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google the last few years – we're pushed to stand apart and offer new ways to bring in revenue to create the consistent content you see here every day, so that we can not only survive a tough landscape, but continue to grow within it.

To be fully transparent, there's a lot of "money making" opportunities I turn down because they're either scummy, detrimental to the reading experience, or just completely off-brand for what we do. That's things like Native Advertising, Sponsored Posts (companies buying links w/ poor content), and more. We probably leave a significant amount of money on the table by avoiding these, but they're counter to our principles as we build this site.

While we are dipping our toes into Promotion/Sponsoring with this new format, we're going to be very careful about how we do it - and ensure it doesn't impact your experience when you come here.

Promote Your Game on TechRaptor (or Product)

Which is why we’re launching a new ad format here, built with three key aspects in mind:

• User Experience
• Revenue Growth
• Value to Advertisers (Ensuring pricing is fair)

When I build something, I believe in doing it right, and with not only our indie slant as an outlet, but also the teams that build such incredible games in mind – I want to ensure we’re driving value in these unique new ad slots that are purely focused on products our readers will be interested in.

We've given away over 300,000 free impressions to smaller games while we tested out the system and dialed in the pricing, and I'll consistently review the metrics and pricing to ensure it's fair. I don't believe in gouging prices for this slot, knowing that a) we'll drive revenue for the site in a new way b) give developers more ability to get eyeballs on their games.

We’ll only be allowing certain types of products to be promoted in order to focus on having a high-quality site that isn’t riddled with the cheap-looking ads that frustrate many readers online:

• Products we will allow: Video Games, Board Games, Gaming Accessories, Tech Accessories, some software
  • Note on Software: I will personally vet any software we promote. As someone who works in IT by day, I understand the risks that come with potentially poor software that you install, and with Cybersecurity top of mind, will ensure we're not promoting something that can create a security concern.
• Products we will not allow: Health and Wellness, Gamer Food/Drinks, Non-Gaming Products, Casino or Gambling Products

With this ad slot, Developers and PR will be able to advertise their product to our readership in ways that are unintrusive and put a focus on their games and products first.

We’ve tested out a number of these the 2 weeks, which you can see a few of below:

Why We're Doing This

We hope to utilize this new format to drive some additional revenue, allowing us to remove some of the ads that frustrate our users, and build more sustainable and consistent revenue that will allow us to keep creating content in a year that offers a tough landscape in publishing.

This isn't a change we enter in lightly, and I'll personally remain in charge of the sales of these slots to keep things separate from our core editorial wing. Purchased slots will have no bearing on our coverage, and we won't give coverage preference to companies that purchase slots.

Where To Get More Details

If you're interested in promoting your game or product on our site, check out our advertising page, and you can reach out to advertise[at]techraptor.net to purchase a slot, or get information (and our Ad Kit) from our us.

If you’re a reader looking for ways to support us, – the best one remains Patreon at this time, but down the line we do plan on re-launching ad-free memberships to give you a low-cost option to support us and have all ads (including these) removed.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach me directly at rutledge[at]techraptor.net or @TheRealRutledge on Twitter.