Zwift Insider

Understanding the Challenge and Setting the Strategy

When we approached Zwift Insider, the premier destination for indoor cycling news, metrics and insights, in early 2021, they were already a profitable and fast growing publisher. The challenge was to demonstrate meaningful uplift across technical, operational and financial performance for a site that was already performing exceptionally well. We began by meeting with the team to understand their goals, workflows and dependencies, and it became clear they needed a white glove, full service monetisation strategy that would allow them to focus on creating world leading content while retaining the flexibility to access and analyse their own data. We followed this discovery phase with a comprehensive suite of bespoke tests examining browser performance, ad render behaviour, compliance with technical and regulatory frameworks, and a full review of their existing technology stack to identify opportunities for improvement.

Upon launch, we delivered a completely rebuilt ad setup with fewer but more effective ad units, eliminated mis rendering formats, and reduced browser memory usage from advertising by 50 percent. A new consent management platform prevented cookies from dropping before consent and ensured GDPR compliance across EU traffic. We overhauled the ads.txt file, reducing errors from 137 to zero, and deployed a secure, user friendly script allowing the Zwift Insider team to maintain it without FTP access. We wrapped the entire environment in industry standard malware prevention and brand safety controls, and we continue to resolve an average of 11 technical issues per month while supporting the growth of their direct advertising business. All performance and revenue data flows into a bespoke database via the Trade House Media API and is visualised in a fully customisable analytics dashboard. Most importantly, RPM increased by three times compared to the previous provider, with all revenue managed and insured by Allianz to give Zwift Insider complete confidence in the stability and safety of their advertising operations.