It sometimes feels like not enough time is dedicated to email newsletters and their revenue potential.
Newsletters are at least 20 years old now, but they remain the workhorse for digital marketing, and they’re a strong revenue producer as well. But most conversation about digital media tends to be on the website-engagement side, and on the broader digital advertising scene. The truth is, though, that email newsletters have their own complex set of rules and best practices for maximizing revenue.
We met the folks from Passendo, a company dedicated to email newsletter monetization, at the Business Information & Media Summit in New Orleans earlier this month. They have a compelling story, and they certainly have a deep understanding at a granular level of what drives advertising in the newsletter format.
At Fox Tales, we’re always interested in sharing innovations and ideas for revenue growth, so we were pleased to catch up with Passendo Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Anders Rantzau Rasmussen after BIMS. Passendo is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and they made the trek to New Orleans to share their insights with the audience at that conference. Here, we share Anders’ perspective with our readers.
Fox Tales: Emails remain the workhorse of media companies’ communication with their audience. Monetization can be tricky. What are the most important advertising formats, and which generate the most revenue, typically?
Anders Rasmussen: For most B2B media companies, sponsorships are still the highest-value format. Premium placements such as main sponsor blocks, native in-content units, and newsletter takeovers generate the strongest revenue because they combine context, trust, and guaranteed visibility.
What’s changing is how top publishers layer additional formats around sponsorships to increase total yield:
- Audience-targeted campaigns.
- High-value programmatic relationships.
- Share-of-Voice (SoV) split sponsorships.
- Run-of-network/remnant placements.
- Lead generation formats (CPC/CPL).
Anders Rasmussen.
Publishers using a structured “waterfall” approach—instead of a single-format model—are seeing meaningful year-over-year uplift. One documented Passendo example shows a $750k YoY increase after moving from sponsorship-only to a diversified model.
Fox Tales: What are some up-and-coming advertising solutions?
Rasmussen: Two models are expanding fast because they increase revenue without replacing existing sponsorship sales:
- Share-of-Voice (SoV) sponsorship splits.
Instead of selling one exclusive placement, publishers offer 50% or 33% share packages. This lowers entry barriers for advertisers and typically increases total yield by 10–20% on high-demand placements. - Pay-Per-Person/Guaranteed delivery models (PPP).
This monetizes unsold or secondary slots by charging per person reached. It keeps premium sponsorships intact while unlocking revenue from inventory that would otherwise go unsold.
Additional growth areas include:
- Real-time ad selection at moment-of-open.
- First-party data targeted newsletter campaigns.
- Lead generation.
A key theme: Adding products alongside sponsorships—not replacing them—drives adoption internally and revenue externally.
Fox Tales: What are the pain points you hear most often from customers and prospects?
Rasmussen: The most frequent friction points are operational—not demand-related:
- Newsletter ad ops handled manually.
- Limited ability to preview and proof ads before send.
- ESP-only setups that require list splitting for targeting.
- OMS and CRM not connected to newsletter ad delivery.
- Fear that adding products will confuse sales teams.
There is also a persistent commercial concern: Sales teams worry that adding CPM or PPP products will weaken premium sponsorship pricing. Field data shows the opposite—premium packages typically hold value when new tiers are introduced clearly.
Fox Tales: How should media operators best use the data (engagement metrics and first-party info) to maximize their newsletter monetization?
Rasmussen: The strongest monetization gains come from activating first-party data at ad-decision time, not just reporting it afterward.
Best practice includes:
- Targeting first-party audience segments in real time.
- Packaging campaigns by audience and engagement tier.
- Using engagement signals to qualify premium inventory.
- Supporting retargeting and sequential messaging across sends.
When ad serving happens at the moment of open, publishers can match the right ad to the right reader and campaign rules, which enables audience targeting, waterfall models, and advanced packaging.
Fox Tales: What newsletter platforms best produce revenue and sync with the rest of the tech stack?
Rasmussen: Revenue impact is strongest when newsletter monetization runs through a dedicated email ad server layer that integrates with the broader commercial stack.
High-performing setups typically include:
- Email ad server with real-time serving and impression tracking.
- Direct OMS integration for booking and workflow.
- Native format templates for automated creative rendering.
- Built-in ad preview and proofing tools.
- First-party audience targeting.
- Automated reporting feeds.
Publishers implementing this type of infrastructure report up to 85% reduction in newsletter ad ops time, while enabling new revenue models that are not possible with static sponsorship placements alone.