Letterboxd increases revenue 490% through partnership with Playwire
Playwire delivers complete Revenue Amplification solution across both web and app, incorporating direct sales and header bidding.
The Challenge:
Letterboxd wanted to scale its advertising efforts using a data-driven approach that maximized its ad inventory monetization (across both web and app) while driving new premium demand without compromising user experience.
The Solution:
Letterboxd partnered with Playwire for their combination of full-stack technology, analytics and direct sales expertise.
The Result:
Letterboxd experienced a dramatic 490% increase in overall revenue across header bidding, direct deals, DMP-based targeting, and more. Following this increase, moving their app monetization strategy over to Playwire, Letterboxd was able to realize an additional 2433% YoY revenue increase compared to their previous App Provider.
About Letterboxd
Letterboxd is a global social network for grass-roots film discussion and discovery. It can be used as a diary to record and share opinions about films as someone watches them, or just keep track of films that were seen in the past. It allows users to showcase favorites on their profile page, rate, review and tag films as they add them.
Scaling Advertising Efforts
Letterboxd is the global social networking site for movie enthusiasts. Their team had been running programmatic advertising and direct sales themselves, but weren’t able to secure premium sponsorships nor effectively scale programmatic to the level they knew was possible. And while Letterboxd had collected a significant amount of data about their visitors, they weren’t using it to segment their audience or support audience targeting for their advertisers.
Letterboxd wanted to scale its advertising efforts using a data-driven approach that maximized its ad inventory monetization. They also wanted to drive new premium demand without introducing additional operational costs or compromising user experience.
Following the incredible results Letterboxd saw after moving to Playwire for their web publishing efforts, the team then moved management of their app monetization strategy over to Playwire.
It was so easy to get started with Playwire
“We saw results immediately and have seen both premium demand and programmatic revenue from their killer combination of direct sales and full-stack revenue amplification.”
David Larkin, Strategy and Business Development at Letterboxd

Why Playwire?
Letterboxd partnered with Playwire for their combination of full-stack technology, analytics and direct sales expertise.
RAMP
Provided display and in-app header bidding optimized in real-time. Letterboxd got more connections to the exchanges, better revenue share, and tested and optimized target and floor cpms, bid timeout rates, and more
Direct Sales
Added new high-impact ad formats to the site and connected Letterboxd to premium demand partners for new larger deals at higher CPMs.
Audience Targeting
Using the DMP integration increased demand and campaign performance. Playwire segmented audiences by movie genre.
Trendi™
Video player for monetizing video content in a non-intrusive way.
We Helped Them Realize Their Potential
“Letterboxd had huge potential for revenue amplification - they have a huge reach and a deep understanding of their fanbase. By implementing a combination of header bidding, ad monetization, audience segmentation and direct sales we helped them realize that potential,”
Jayson Dubin, CEO atPlaywire

How Much Return?
200% Yield Increase On Header Bidding
Optimization on indirect deals drove significant revenue increase.
50% CPM Increase for Direct Sales Deals
25% CPM Increase from DMP
2433% YoY Revenue Increase from Previous App Provider
Let Playwire focus on your advertising so that you can focus on building up your content and growing your audience.
Whether you need more resources to help manage services, additional demand sources, or higher CPMs, we've got you covered. Playwire unifies advertising in a way never done before by combining Direct Sales, Deal IDs, Header Bidding and more all in one easy solution.