Sponsorship Packages and the Pricing Behind Them

Most publisher rate cards price a shape: 970x250, 300x600, a newsletter slot. We price a product instead — three to five sellable positions, each with a reason attached to its price, and a floor derived from what your inventory already clears programmatically rather than from what feels defensible in a meeting. Where the floor comes from: We start with your ad server's last twelve months and your programmatic clearing price by placement and geography. That figure is the price of the buyer who wants your audience least. Every direct package prices above it by a stated multiple, and we write down why the multiple is what it is: category exclusivity, editorial context, first-party audience data, or a placement no exchange can buy. Where we cannot name the reason, the package does not get built. A package priced on hope collapses in the first negotiation and takes the rate card with it. What gets designed: Category exclusivity windows, priced by category value rather than uniformly — a fintech exclusive on a personal finance vertical is worth several times a homeware exclusive on the same site. Product launch takeovers with a defined creative and delivery envelope. Sponsored series where the sponsor gets attribution and adjacency and does not touch the copy, with that boundary written into the contract rather than agreed on a call. Data and research co-branding, which usually prices highest because the advertiser is buying an asset they will use for a year. Event and webinar tie-ins where you own the audience and they own the offer. The pricing architecture: Flat fee, CPM, or share of voice — each suits a different buyer and a different placement, and mixing all three on one card confuses everybody including your seller. For each package you get list price, floor, and walk-away, plus a discount ladder stating who can approve what and what the buyer gives back for it: a longer term, category exclusivity, creative rights, or a named case study. A discount without a trade is just a lower rate card, arriving slowly. The mechanics nobody writes down until it hurts: Make-good policy defined in advance as a formula rather than negotiated under pressure when a takeover runs a day short. Renewal terms with a right of first refusal on the exclusivity window, which is where most of the second-year revenue lives. Cancellation windows. Creative approval turnaround, in both directions. Competitive separation rules so two rival sponsors never appear in the same session or the same send. What we will not build: Packages that require your editorial team to write, approve or amplify sponsor copy. That trade earns money for two quarters and then costs you the audience that made the inventory worth buying. Rate cards priced only on CPM, because CPM invites the buyer to compare you against an exchange where you will always lose. Anything described as unlimited. Bundles assembled to hit an internal revenue target rather than to answer a buyer's problem — those are visible from outside and they price you as a distressed seller. Who this is not for: Publishers without twelve months of ad server data. We cannot set a floor from an estimate, and a floor set wrong is worse than no floor at all. Also not for teams who want the document but not the pricing discipline. Writing the walk-away price is easy; holding it in a call with a buyer who knows you need the quarter is the actual work, and if nobody on your side will do that, the packages will be discounted to nothing inside two quarters. Handover: Package architecture with pricing rationale, an external rate card, one-pagers per package, contract clause language for exclusivity, make-goods and approvals, and an internal pricing memo written for whoever sits in the negotiation.