Nghe An Newspaper took part in the Google News Initiative’s (GNI) Advertising Lab 2023. The program was designed to support the digital transformation of news organizations in Vietnam, emphasizing audience development, data solutions, and advertising revenue.

Before joining the program, Nghe An Newspaper grappled with audience development and digital advertising challenges. Nghe An Newspaper’s staff were not trained on data analysis or able to structure content production processes around readers’ needs. The editorial team had to collaborate with a third-party technical partner to address website issues. However, there was no structured approach or sufficient technical knowledge among the team to assess the quality of the technical partner's work.

Beyond audience development, Nghe An Newspaper struggled to build a comprehensive digital advertising revenue model. The team hoped to build a revenue model, which would include diverse advertising sources, and align with reader development efforts.

The Nghe An Newspaper team made significant strides in improving their website performance and digital advertising initiatives through the program. The most impactful initiative was the page loading speed optimization. By converting images to the WebP format, optimizing website fonts, and minifying scripts, they were able to achieve a remarkable 97% increase in page loading speed within the first month of program participation. This emphasis on Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics and page performance enabled fruitful collaborations with the newspaper’s technical partner.

Additionally, the team leveraged reader data insights from Google Analytics to enhance content and grow their pageviews by 32%. They experimented with different content categories based on these insights, analyzed their effectiveness, and focused on producing the most engaging content for their users.

Nghe An Newspaper also focused on digital advertising innovation. The publisher enabled a successful new Interstitial format, and leveraged A/B testing to determine the optimal CPM price for the category groups with the most visitors, which helped make advertisement targeting more precise for new brand direct campaigns. This proactive approach empowered the Nghe An team to achieve a 112% uplift in programmatic advertising revenue.