One can not accurately tell the story of American conservatism without discussing National Review. From the magazine’s founding in 1955 by William F. Buckley, Jr to the launch of National Review Online in the mid-1990s to the present day, National Review has had a central place in American political thought and debate. That is why it was such a pleasure for us to partner with National Review to redesign their media kit for current and potential advertisers. 

It is a major understatement to say that a lot has changed in the media world since the Eisenhower-era.

The Engage team worked with National Review to transform what had previously been two simple PDFs into a responsive, mobile-friendly website that truly showcased all that National Review has to offer advertisers.

From traditional advertising in print and online to email and events sponsorship, National Review offers its partners a variety of ways connect with an influential audience–and the new online media kit offers advertisers an easy way to connect with a contact at National Review.

For this project, our team had three key goals:

• Develop a site that will deliver a clean, professional look across all devices by incorporating a responsive design.
• Produce a site that can be quickly and easily updated by the NR team.
• Provide insights to National Review to help them better understand their audience.

The design of the site enables the user to quickly connect with National Review’s history before finding the relevant advertising platform. The site emphasizes key information upfront, while containing enough technical sophistication to both answer potential advertisers questions and serve as a reference point for National Review’s staff.

One of our core values at Engage is that data drives success. Rigorous, thoughtful data analysis often constitutes the difference between a well-intentioned try and meaningful understanding with real-world applicability. Two elements of this project reflect that belief.

First, the analytics tools installed throughout the site offer data about standard measurements such as traffic, user flow, and depth of engagement. But these tools can also be used to better understand potential advertisers. That site contains a great deal of information. The magazine page, for example, contains a history of the magazine, a PDF of a full print edition, information about National Review’s influence in government, a production schedule, general audience information, and the cost and technical specifications for ads.

That’s a lot of information.

But, given the way it is structured on the page and the analytics associated with that structure, National Review’s staff will be able to understand which elements of that story are of greatest interest. What do users click on? In what order? What was the last piece of the story they accessed prior to connecting with staff? The answers to all of these questions can provide valuable insights into what is most likely to be relevant to future advertisers, better enabling National Review’s staff to answer those questions before they have even been asked.

Second, with access to National Review’s Facebook page and our proprietary dataset we were able to provide actionable insights to improve National Review’s social performance. Given Facebook’s recent changes to its News Feed and the ensuing increasing in traffic from Facebook to news websites, harnessing and capitalizing on this new flow of eyeballs has become all the more important to news organizations. Our analysis highlighted when best to post stories, different measures of engagement, how National Review’s audience breaks down, and what other pages those fans like on Facebook. By better understanding National Review’s Facebook universe, its page administrators can better understand their fans, what interests them, and how to best interact with them.