The Ankler’s Ad Revenue Is Up 500% YOY. Here’s How CEO Janice Min Plans to Sustain It

For Ankler Media CEO Janice Min, 2024 was the inflection point when advertisers finally understood that when it comes to audiences, it's not all about size. “Our goal is to have the largest, most pristine audience we can have in terms of the subscriber list,” said Min, former editorial director at The Hollywood Reporter and ex-editor-in-chief of Us Weekly. “The turmoil of the industry has made information a premium. As deal-making changes, people want to know what's happening.” Min launched Ankler Media in 2022, expanding one entertainment industry newsletter—written by now editor in chief Richard Rushfield—to a handful focused on more specialist topics, like Hollywood dealmakers, or the numbers that streamers don't want you to see, as well as podcasts. Profitable, with 11 full-time staff and a squad of contractors, The Ankler is on track to make $10 million in revenue next year, partly thanks to keeping costs low. It has grown ad revenue by 500% year-on-year, Min wouldn’t share more specifics, but as a young company that's likely from a low base. Around 60% of revenue comes from ads (including event sponsorship, newsletter, and podcast sponsorship) and 40% from subscribers. The Ankler publishes on Substack and has over 90,000 subscribers, many of whom are C-suite executives in the entertainment industry. It doesn’t share how many of those pay. Min said that it’s much higher than Substack’s average of between 5% and 10%, but half of its paying subscribers do so annually, setting it up with a steady flow of reader revenue. Sitting down with ADWEEK at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, Min discussed covering the business of Hollywood, challenges with building subscribers, and how publishers need to stop seeming so thirsty. Here's what she revealed. Building an audience-first subs business is "hand-to-hand combat every day” Rushfield's The Ankler had 12,000 Substack subscribers when Min arrived, and they have grown that by adding a more habitual cadence and signing up new writers. “When I started looking at the subscriber numbers and who was subscribing, I was like 'Oh my God, this is hand-to-hand combat every day.' Some days you move in inches and some days you move in miles and some days you don't move at all. You have to prove yourself every day. Once you start becoming boring or you don't deliver on your headlines or when you start to waste people's time, they’ll just hit the cancel button.” Becoming an essential read takes relentless discipline “There's a word that people use a lot in pitching television right now: are you undeniable? For the Ankler, we think about how we are undeniable and is this something [readers] need. And if they don't need this, then they're not really working in the industry. A lot of outlets become very distracted by what they want to do, like passion projects or checking boxes. But if you have a stripped-down organization, you put a discipline on everything." How The Ankler can stay in its pirate ship phase Someone told Min recently that running The Ankler right now is like 'running a pirate ship.' “You can do whatever you want. You can make all the rules, it's about pushing the boundaries of the business and with what you cover. Once you cross over into an incumbent, it's when you see these businesses stagnate.” So how to maintain that quality while pushing for growth? “It’s really about leadership. I read almost everything that goes out still so we can say when [writers] need to push harder. We're always encouraging people to say it like it is. The mistake that a lot of people who cover these sorts of glamorous industries make is that they want to be invited on the red carpet. We’ve been pretty good about setting a boundary around that.” It benefits The Ankler that Penske owns so many titles “For us, this year was an infection point where advertisers realized that they would rather reach 100,000 amazing people than spray it out to the universe. We really benefit from Penske Media owning all those publications [The Hollywood Reporter, Deadspin, Variety, among others]. They just machine gun out the same stories all day long and it's kind of exhausting. They're trying to build their Comscore numbers so they can sell some programmatic advertising. Advertisers are realizing they’re paying for scale, paying for an audience that doesn't matter to them. All these advertisers want to know how to reach the decision-makers. In our case, that can be voters for the Oscars or the Emmys. We can tell you we have the CEO of every studio or streamer and that they’re consuming [The Ankler].” People can tell when publishers are thirsty Newsletter-first publishers like Puck or Axios are the bright spots in digital media, and for business titles, email makes a lot of sense. But other media businesses need to start thinking beyond the inbox in a way that’s not desperate. “I don't think any of us are becoming TikTok stars, but it's a balance. You want to try to be everywhere, but in a way that doesn't feel thirsty. When media companies begin to feel thirsty, you can feel it and it’s just too sweaty. We're doing what makes sense for us. If we try to be all things to all people, then are we diluting what makes it work as a B2B business.”

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The Ankler’s Ad Revenue Is Up 500% YOY. Here’s How CEO Janice Min Plans to Sustain It

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