Layout Teardown: Episode 1 - Daily Mail Ad Layout Strategy & Programmatic Advertising Walkthrough

Layout Teardown is a video segment where Ben and Brock breakdown the ad strategy and website layout of popular websites. In this week's episode, we're taking a look at Daily Mail, a popular news tabloid website in the UK, US and Australia. Ben and Brock talk through the reasons behind Daily Mail's page RPM strategy, the ad units on desktop on mobile, and their ad loading setup.

Key Takeaways

• Direct traffic gives them permission to be aggressive. More than half of the Daily Mail's audience comes back on its own, without needing Google to send them. That takes a lot of pressure off. When you are not dependent on search rankings, you can pack the page with ads without worrying about being penalised for it.
• Thirteen partners, thirty seconds, repeat. They run 13 ad partners competing simultaneously and refresh their sticky sidebars every 30 seconds. For a site where people sit and read long articles, that combination generates an enormous volume of impressions from a single visit.
• The mini-stick is a clever fix for a real problem. Fast scrollers often blow past the top banner before it has even finished loading, which means the impression never counts. The Daily Mail solves this by pinning that top ad in place for the first 50 pixels of scroll, just long enough to guarantee it registers as a paid view.
• Grey boxes keep the page from jumping around. When a refreshing ad loads in a different size, the whole page can lurch and shift, which is an awful experience. Locking sidebar ads inside fixed grey boxes means the surrounding content never moves, regardless of what size ad loads next.
• Loading ten heavy ads at once is a self-inflicted wound. Firing everything simultaneously hammers the browser and drags page speed down. A batched approach, where the top banner and main sidebar load first and the lower refresh units follow a few seconds later, would ease that strain considerably.
• Mobile is a different product entirely. The desktop site is unapologetically dense. The mobile version is notably restrained. Why? Find out in the full transcript below. 

What is the Daily Mail's core ad strategy, and why can they get away with it?

Ben: Welcome to Layout Teardown, where we bring you through some of the biggest publishers globally to walk you through their ad layout strategy and how their programmatic advertising strategy is working. We will be bringing you through our first episode today, which is on the Daily Mail. We've picked the Daily Mail for a few reasons — they're one of the biggest publishers globally, they have a huge amount of traffic, and for good and bad reasons they're an extremely well-known brand in world culture. But for another key reason we've picked them: they've gone really hard on a specific strategy, which is page RPM, ad-heavy, and programmatic-heavy. And there are a few key reasons they've been able to get away with that. We want to walk you through desktop and mobile and walk you through what we like and what we don't like, so you can understand their best pieces. The big thing for the Daily Mail is they have a huge amount of ads, and really different ad strategies are kind of dictated by the audience type that you have, the content that you have, and your competition as well. For the Daily Mail, they've got a captive audience that really loves their content. They're able to exploit this a little bit with a heavy ad experience whilst keeping that traffic high. Let's kick off on a high level, Brock — how do you see their strategy from a programmatic standpoint?

Brock: I would put them in what we like to call at Publift the page RPM strategy. So this is all about maximising every dollar and cent you can out of every page you get. If you were to put all the news publishers on a spectrum and figure out where they sit — a lot of them that have subscription-based strategies like to encourage people to go and sign up and spend a monthly fee, and they might have a much lighter ad experience. You'd put the Daily Mail at the other end. They're not trying to drive a massive uptake in subscriptions — they are trying to make sure that they make as much money as they can out of each user.

Definition — Page RPM: Revenue Per Mille (thousand) at the page level — a measure of how much total advertising revenue a publisher earns per 1,000 page views. A page RPM strategy prioritises maximising this number above other goals.

What does the Daily Mail's traffic data tell us?

Ben: So we're going to jump in and first things first we're going to look at a few stats with a few Chrome extensions so we can get an idea of what's going on here. Obviously we don't have any insider data on the Daily Mail, so we're using a few kind of workarounds here. Just to show you the scale of what's going on — we're getting about 360 million monthly visits. They have a really strong visit duration of 4 minutes and 35 seconds, so people are spending time here reading this content. And we've got about three pages per visit, which is pretty standard for what you'd see across news publications — people like to browse. And just looking at the geography as well, it's heavily focused in English-speaking regions, which are generally high-CPM regions. So overall that's pretty positive for the kind of page RPM strategy that they're going for. Something that's interesting, and fits with what we were talking about in their ability to have lots of ads, is they have a large amount of traffic coming from direct — about 56% is coming straight to the site, and only about 28% coming from search. I guess that means they're less exposed to what Google might enforce. Brock, do you want to tell us a bit about how that would change things and what you would do differently based on that kind of information?

Brock: Yeah, this is really interesting. With search coming in at about 27% there, it kind of means that they don't have to worry too much — they should definitely still worry — but they don't have to worry too much about things like Core Web Vitals. You've got many, many ads on the page taking up quite a lot of the real estate above the fold, things that might hurt you in search — that exists and that's part of their strategy. But with 55% and some change going through a direct channel, they're able to get away with it.

Ben: Definitely. For the non-informed, do you want to give a quick run through of Core Web Vitals as well?

Brock: Sure. For publishers now trying to produce web pages that are easy to read and acceptable to read across the world, across different devices and different bandwidths — Core Web Vitals is a standard that's been imposed that lets people optimise their websites in a way that actually makes sense for end users. It's about page performance, making sure you've got a good experience on there. Google always ranked for that to some extent, but they've really pulled it out into these specific metrics that we can now see and optimise towards — to make the experience better, but also it influences where you rank within search rankings. So it's really important to publishers overall. But yeah, the Daily Mail — most of their user base is coming straight to them, so they're less exposed to that risk.

Definition — Core Web Vitals: a set of Google metrics measuring page experience: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint — load speed), INP (Interaction to Next Paint — responsiveness), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift — visual stability). They are a factor in Google search rankings.

What does the Daily Mail's desktop ad setup look like — header bidding, refresh, and outstream?

Ben: So yeah, that's something interesting in terms of stats. Just looking at their layout then — obviously it's flashing quite a bit there. We've got some refresh going — it looks like it's on about a 30-second refresh interval. They're keeping it tight there. The key idea with refresh is you're just refreshing that ad creative, you're getting new impressions in for the same user. It's always good especially when you've got long visit duration like they have. And the other key thing we can see is they're clearly running header bidding — they've got 13 partners in here. It looks like some of these are video-specific, but that's a healthy stack. They've got most of the major partners globally all bidding and competing in there.

Brock: The other big piece we can see is they've got an outstream player — I guess we'd call that a fly-away sticky player on the side — and that is running. It's just outstream from what I can see, there's no actual video content, so it's just running ads.

Ben: Yeah. Really good way to get some video ads into the page. In this case it's just ads — so think about it: traditional broadcaster-type publishers have a suite of video ready to go. Someone like the Daily Mail and other publication-based publishers just don't have that content, and the cost to actually go and generate that kind of content is large. So outstream is a perfect way to leverage the increased CPM that you get from video without having to go through the rigmarole of building video content. Something like this running outstream is a perfect way to circumvent those costs and get the revenue.

Brock: Yeah. And video CPMs are 5 to 10x what you can get on display. So if you can get it on site, it's a real money maker. You make more if you're running your own video content on there, I think, because you've probably got some more engagement with your audience — they want to see that content. If you're just running ads people are less engaged, you get a lower CPM, but it's still a nice revenue maker for most publishers.

Definition — Outstream video: video ads that play within page content rather than inside a video player, allowing publishers to monetise with video CPMs without producing their own video content.

Ben: They have a lot going on here — there are two players on screen right away. There's one thing to add as well to the always-float format: this one on the right never actually begins in content. This means that from a policy point of view — these actually come from Google — so you lose one of your most major contributing demand partners when you do it that way.

Brock: Now that doesn't mean it's a bad thing — Google obviously bring a lot of revenue to the table. But in this case you're trying to capture the user in transient mode.

Ben: So if you look at the above-the-fold setup, it's quite healthy. You've got a nice billboard position as well.

Brock: Yeah, so this is really important — we always want to get a 970x250 into the fold. If you can get it above the fold, you hit all the traditional markers for a high-performing ad unit. A 970x250 takes up a lot of space — clearly advertisers pay for that kind of space. They'll pay for that real estate when they know that it's above the fold, they're happy to pay a little bit more generally speaking. And when you're on the Daily Mail — a brand that's well known across many different demographics and all around the world — this becomes quite an attractive unit to buy.

What's the viewability challenge with the top billboard, and how has Daily Mail addressed it?

Ben: Another key thing just on that unit while we're on it — what we often see with header units, particularly when they're just underneath the menu and above content, is that often — particularly if you've got a slow-loading page — they can have quite low viewability. We can see viewability there kind of below 40% sometimes. The reason is people scroll to the content that they're trying to get to very quickly, so you've missed the chance to even display that unit to users. So it looks like a highly viewable position, but often it isn't.

Brock: Viewability is a very important metric in CPMs — it's probably one of the most important — and it's definitely one of the main ones that we can actually drive to enhance performance. We can't change where the user is coming from, which has a big impact. But we can change the viewability. So something that the Daily Mail has implemented — I might need to refresh to show it — they've got a small sticky feature on the header unit. So if you watch as I scroll, we get that ad stick for about 50 pixels. And really we're just trying to combat that low viewability that we can sometimes get on that top unit.

Definition — Viewability: an industry-standard metric measuring whether an ad had the opportunity to be seen. The MRC standard defines a display ad as viewable if 50% of its pixels were in view for at least 1 second.

Ben: Now as we scroll down the site a bit further, we've got two rails on the side — they both have refresh implemented. They're going to have a massive impression volume and are going to be 100% viewable. So that's going to keep viewability of the overall site high. A quick note just on sizing — using the Publift Ad Wizard Chrome extension — you can see that we've got a fairly simple multisize setup in here. Often what we do for an ad unit is we'll have a combination of sizes that can serve. The idea being: the more sizes you've got in a position, the more competition you actually have. Whoever pays the most for any specific size — that's the one that's actually going to serve. For a specific position, we'll normally have all of the sizes that fit within the widest size there. They've kept it a lot more simple here. I guess potentially that's influenced by their direct strategy, Brock — or do you think this is just a bit of a miss on their side?

Brock: Generally it's business rules. And you mentioned direct strategy being one of those — there might be a very valid reason that they've decided from an editorial point of view to have nicely structured sizes. Now of course that might be at odds with their page RPM strategy. Having a mix of sizes conceptually opens yourself up for bids across sizes that you might not have had in this situation. So it's always good, and we always recommend having a good range of IAB-approved sizes in your key units, particularly those that are refreshing.

Ben: Definitely. Like for example, this 300x600 unit — very easy to get that 160x600 in that position, and that's a pretty good size that fills pretty well. So that's competition straight away that you've boosted in there.

What is the fixed-container sidebar technique, and why does it matter for CLS?

Ben: Okay, if we scroll a little bit further — here's a new feature that's an interesting way of using a bit of space to get a little bit more from it. I'll pass to you, Brock, just on the unit on the right-hand side.

Brock: Yeah, so this is a good use case for multisize. We've got a rail position — or a sidebar position, whatever you like to call it — that can take up to a 300x600. But of course we all know that the 300x250 is one of the king creative sizes, so it's best to keep it involved. Now in this case we've got a lot of empty space. I think the Daily Mail have done a great job by putting in a fixed background — not only is that good for readership continuity, you don't just have empty white space — but you've also solved for the Core Web Vital of Cumulative Layout Shift, or CLS. So in this case where we've got a refresh in particular, you don't see any of the snapping behaviour that you sometimes see across the internet where a 300x250 explodes into a 300x600 on the refresh event, or vice versa, causing all the content to jump. By putting in the grey background — they've even put their branding in there, which is nice and slick — and adding a bit of sticky behaviour so as you scroll, we can see that it sticks for a bit. In this case we're also getting a little bit more on the viewability piece. Across 400 million users, a slight bump in viewability produces meaningful incremental revenue at that kind of scale.

Definition — CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): a Core Web Vitals metric that measures unexpected movement of page content. Ads that change size on refresh can cause high CLS, which hurts both user experience and SEO rankings.

Ben: Definitely. This is a product we use at Publift — we call it a mini sticky or a mini scroller — and we've had really good performance from it. It uses the space that we already have, we get to fix the container so we don't have CLS problems, and we get a nice viewability bump as well. So hats off to the Daily Mail for that one.

What does the in-content ad strategy look like, and what would Publift change?

Ben: All right, so let's have a look at below the fold to see what's going on in content. We have some units within content — they're calling them within their fact box. We have them as a fixed size, which again is interesting. These are fixed at 300x250. It's a pretty common size. Brock, what would we do here differently if it was Publift?

Brock: Well, first, props to the Daily Mail — they've put in a pretty good position for at least this first one, where you're about two or three scrolls down, beneath the key headline of the content. There's an image there that usually causes a scroll behaviour for the regular user. Now for this position specifically, one thing I noticed is they don't have the 728x90 participating in the auction, and that's principally because the content corridor — the UI itself, the written content — is only set to about 680 to 690 pixels wide. So it wouldn't fit today.

Ben: That's right. You don't want ads that are overhanging and getting accidentally clicked — that's when you get into trouble. But you can see they've already put some pretty good thought into what they're doing on the mini sticky side and the sidebar side. So that could apply the exact same thing here. If we had a little bit more room for ads — which is always a competitive conversation to have with editorial teams — just by pushing out your content corridor by probably 20 to 30 pixels, eyeballing it from here, you might be able to get a very significant jump in revenue. Because you're going to be having the 300x250 — one of the best ones as mentioned — but also the 728x90, which is a top-performing unit.

Brock: Exactly right. Then you can apply the mini sticky technique as well. So any leftover space gets that nice scroll function. It starts basically at the top of the container, and then as the user scrolls it scrolls within — it's basically getting like 200 pixels to move really.

Ben: Yeah, that's right. And you're also dealing with the layout shift element as well. They've got a nice background, they've got the Facebook clickable links and those kinds of pieces into their box. So you might not have a full scroll, but generally the theory is the same.

Brock: Nice. Now moving forward — another key piece that adds to the Daily Mail's programmatic and page RPM strategy is they've gone for infinite scroll. So as you scroll, more content and articles come up. As we know from Facebook and Instagram, it's a great way to keep people engaged and get more impressions. So that fits nicely with the strategy that they've gone for here.

What is Outbrain doing on the page, and why does it work for the Daily Mail?

Ben: Something else we wanted to call out that fits well with the Daily Mail strategy — if we continue scrolling we're going to get to Outbrain. Outbrain is — they call themselves a native content provider. They're really in kind of an advertising product that's placed at the bottom of articles, doing these clickbait-style ad-slash-traffic-circulation products. They might circulate content to different articles on the Daily Mail, but also to different articles globally. So it's kind of like a traffic-sharing product slash advertising product. It works really well on these types of sites because you've got people just browsing in general, and they get pretty high CPMs from what I've heard. You're capturing transient users.

Brock: Yeah. So if you read an article and you're a publisher, you want the users to continue navigating your site — to continue to spend time, see ads, click ads, and of course you make a bit of extra cash out of it. Outbrain and the like are very good at either driving up the page view count and increasing the time on page, or even just getting that CPC revenue through.

Ben: Yeah. And they have teams that are specialised in creating clickable content — they're A/B testing these thumbnails that are like crazy skin-peel products and, you know, just those ridiculous things that you can't not click. So yeah, a nice product to have there. Often a lot of publishers think it looks pretty gross — some people might agree — but it makes a lot of revenue and is a pretty big part of the ad tech ecosystem.

Definition — Outbrain: a content discovery and native advertising platform that places sponsored content recommendations — typically at the bottom of articles — earning revenue on a cost-per-click basis while driving traffic between publishers.

How should Daily Mail be thinking about lazy loading and batching?

Ben: Okay, so that's pretty much it from a desktop layout perspective. We're going to go into a new level of depth just around the actual loading of the ad product on page and areas of opportunity that we can see there. Brock has done a bit of a deep dive into how they're calling ads and when, and we're going to bring you through what that looks like and what we would do differently. So Brock, tell us what you would do better here.

Brock: Well, firstly the Daily Mail have done a really good job. I'm a proponent of page RPM approaches. One thing I really noticed when I was digging through the site is around how and when they load their ads. Hopefully it's not news to anyone that when you're loading very large — or relatively large — image files, in this case big ads, your computer has to work pretty hard. The major issue with that is just how much your browser can handle. In the Daily Mail's case, on desktop, you can already see you've got two sticky units on the side, you've got a major billboard, you've got multiple in-content units, the sidebar that overlaps with content. So we're often trying to load something like 10 ads at once. Then you've got the refresh kicking in. So let's have a look at what the ad inspector has to say about that — if you scroll through, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven — there's plenty there. And you can scroll for a while. So there's a question around lazy loading that needs to be asked: do we need to be loading all of these ads straight away at once? We haven't scrolled since we've been talking here.

Ben: Now when we think about page RPM, we're talking impression volumes — we are talking about taking a haircut on eCPM to get the impressions up. So I'm not overly concerned about loading lots of ads. That being said, we like to use batching very actively. Tell us about batching.

Brock: Batching is great. So think of lazy loading as a bottom-up approach to managing what you're loading on the page. Lazy loading essentially means that rather than loading all the ads at once, any ads that we have further down the page we might decide to load once a user starts scrolling towards them — so we don't have to load everything at the same time, but we can also ensure that those ads are actually going to be viewed.

Definition — Lazy loading: a technique where ads (or other content) are only loaded when a user scrolls close to them, rather than all at once on page load. Reduces initial page weight and can improve viewability scores.

Definition — Batching: a more structured version of lazy loading where ad units are grouped into sequential batches (e.g. batch one = above-fold units, batch two = in-content units), each batch loading after the previous one has rendered. Reduces browser strain and ensures the most valuable units load first.

Ben: Yeah. And you can tell that the Daily Mail have come to an agreement that loading the ad even if it's unseen makes money — it's probably going to outperform not serving yet. And I think that's fine. But what you could do if you flip it on its head is prioritise the ad units that need to load quickly to load quickly. So the major one is the billboard above the fold. If that's going to be a money maker — and I have no doubt it is — it's large but it's very, very close to the top of the page. We're waiting for any header bidding auction, I haven't dug into that yet. They will have put in some safeguards with the sticky piece. But it's important to ensure that loads quickly because I think that'll be one of the better-performing units. All the sticky stuff can wait — or at least doesn't have to prioritise in batch one. So you've got your two sticky sidebars, you've got your fly-away video player — those kinds of ever-present units can load when ready. Really what we want to be doing is ensuring that the first unit is loading nice and quick and the second unit is not far behind.

Brock: These two are understood as above-the-fold in market now — they will just naturally grab a higher eCPM. The rest is going to be refreshing, can be transient. We want to ensure they load, and they're probably not as important as the first two we mentioned. So what are we doing to do that?

Ben: Is that in the auction?

Brock: Sort of — it's around structuring the way that they make the right calls. And of course that has major impacts on the auction. So what they could be doing is picking the units that have to load instantly — that might be as many as four, five, or six — and trying to send them out to Prebid as quick as possible, and then instantly schedule the rest in the second batch. That'd be the simplest way to do it. Of course, over time with a structured A/B testing program, they'll be able to get into a more micro approach to learning. So yeah — without going through that whole process, you want to make sure that your billboard's loading nice and quick, your main sidebar unit is loading nice and quick. Your video player could probably be second, and then your in-content units and secondary sidebar units come in afterwards. The off-shoot impact on the browser itself is that we're not trying to render 10 creatives at once — we're trying to render five, then five. And you get a viewability benefit as well: instead of trying to load 10 ad units at once and slowing everything down, your above-the-fold units have a slightly better chance of loading fast. We get a nicer experience for the user, we get the ads that are important in front of people first, and then we do a separate call and get the rest loaded in — maybe even on a different timeout with different partners. We can really customise that at Publift.

What is the Daily Mail's approach to ad-blocker users?

Ben: We've tried to do something a little bit different again. Obviously right now we're on a pretty good machine that has pretty good internet in an office, so we've got ads loading up pretty quickly. If we were on a mobile device in the middle of nowhere I'm sure this would look very different. So adjusting what we load based on the user's internet speeds or device type as well is a great way of trying to combat the heavy load that could be impacting their bandwidth and their device and them getting to content.

Ben: So another one we wanted to point out was their ad-blocker strategy. Brock thought this was pretty cool. I'll just turn on my — not that I like ad-blockers as an ad tech professional.

Brock: No one likes ad-blockers in this industry.

Ben: So I'll resume blocking ads now. Okay, so here we go. Do you want to talk us through why you think this is so cool, Brock?

Brock: It's one click. So essentially what they're doing here is they're not letting you get to content. We've got a pop-up that says "Please allow ads on our site — it looks like you're using an ad-blocker and we rely on advertising to fund this site." And this is true — every website and publisher relies on advertising really to fund their site. The only way you can get to it is if you click that button. Most of these pop-ups will basically walk you through how to whitelist the site. They've been able to essentially connect it up with the ad-blocker in some capacity to make it a one-click fix. You can't get to the content if you don't click it — and they get their ads. That's pretty cool.

Ben: Yeah. They've made the choice not to go down the route of monetising ad-block users, which I think is very interesting. I think when you've got a brand like the Daily Mail, that's definitely on the table. I'm not sure how well that flies for very intent-driven, search-heavy publishers. But as we mentioned at the start, direct is their game when it comes to traffic sources. So I think it makes a lot of sense to do this — people are coming here because it's the Daily Mail, not because they searched something online and landed on it. If you're looking for a calculator online and you get a pop-up saying you have to look at ads, you just go to the next calculator. Really cool.

What does the Daily Mail's mobile layout look like, and how does it differ from desktop?

Ben: All right. I think we will swap over to the mobile layout and walk you through how that looks. The first thing that's in your face is this video player — they have gone pretty aggressive on the size of it. Obviously we can exit away, but that's taking up 30% of the screen. And in some cases that's going to perform well — we know that's going to have good viewability. It starts above the fold. They'll make some cash out of that, definitely.

Brock: Next up we've got a nice interscroller — I think this is coming from Bonzai, or maybe Celtra. So this would be a rich media product.

Definition — Rich media: interactive ad formats that go beyond standard display, incorporating video, animations, expandable panels, or other interactive elements. Typically used for direct-sold premium campaigns.

Ben: Yeah, rich media being interactive, more bespoke content. An ad piece that can be used for direct — in this case it is direct, looks like it. We run these just on programmatic units too, so you can do the same kind of customisation to a standard display unit. The benefits being you get larger sizes in a small position and you get a bit more engagement. But I think they're specifically getting direct demand through and selling this as a specific unit. It looks quite nice, jumps out at you. We've got the Better Call Saul ad coming up there too.

Ben: Scrolling down — oh, we've got a swipe-to-next-story feature. Yeah, I like that idea. When you're playing the game that the Daily Mail are playing, you're trying to maximise readership, you're trying to get people to go to the next article. Something like that I'm sure gets a few of the hundreds of millions of people to flick it along.

Brock: Definitely. The more people we get looking at more articles, the more impressions we have.

Ben: Okay. We've got some more in-content units here. From what I can tell, they've gone completely fixed sizes for these — they're all 300x250s, no multisize running at all. Again, this is probably similar to what we were saying on desktop — either business rules, or this was probably some kind of wholesale Core Web Vitals change to prevent any kind of CLS. They've really just decided: pick a size and keep it where it is. We've got no mobile sticky here, but I guess that's because of the video player.

Brock: Yeah. A mobile sticky is often a really strong-performing unit on mobile. Mobile is often a harder area to optimise just because we've got less space on the page. On desktop we've got much bigger sizes, much more space for ad units. It's a little bit harder on mobile.

Ben: Yeah. I also think you're capturing people in a different frame of mind as well. If you're at work sitting at your desktop or laptop and you're on the Daily Mail, you're probably killing time, probably having a read. If you're on your phone, you could be in transit on a train, you could be walking the dog in the park — whatever you're doing, you're just going to flick.

Brock: Definitely. I think you really need to have a think about the scroll speed that that kind of user will put in.

Ben: That seems to be it — so they've kept it pretty simple on mobile, which is quite different to what they've done on desktop. Why do you think that is?

Brock: Yeah, I think it goes into the transitionary nature — for lack of a better term — of the mobile users. I also think their desktop users will be creatures of habit. The people that are coming in from desktop are probably more often coming back. I think if you could dive into their Google Analytics you might be able to see that. But I think mobile is their growth area — they're trying to get more users, trying to get the younger audience involved, trying to compete with the socials — your TikToks, your Facebook, etc. And to do that I think having fewer ads might be your strategy.

Ben: Yeah, a good question. It'd be really interesting to see — obviously we can see the total traffic and we've got about 8% coming from social, which is pretty high but would make sense. I'm guessing on mobile that's where all that social traffic's landing really. So it's a different user type and probably a different journey as well — you're clicking on a piece of content because you've read the headline, rather than going to the Daily Mail to look at content.

Brock: Yeah. You've also got things like Google News, where these publishers can — for lack of a better term — SEO themselves into these search buckets. Google News is the key one for Android, the one that I use. You get a Daily Mail headline in there, it's a very easy navigation step. And that also might flow into AMP even if they're using it — I'm not sure. But it's a very good tool to try and get people in to read content very quickly.

Definition — AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): an open-source Google framework that strips down page HTML to load extremely fast on mobile. Publishers using AMP can appear in Google's top stories carousel but have limited control over their ad stack.

Ben: Definitely. Okay, and that is episode 1 of Layout Teardown, where we went through the Daily Mail. If you enjoyed the video, please like and subscribe. If you have any feedback or any questions, drop it in the comments. And any publishers out there — if you would like your own free website analysis, there'll be a link in the description. Reach out to us and we'd be happy to provide that for you. We'll see you here next time.

This is an edited transcript of Layout Teardown, Episode 1. The words are Ben and Brock's own — lightly edited for readability (filler words, false starts, typos, punctuation). No claims have been rewritten or generated by AI.

‍