From GAM reach to newsletter monetization: How Elsevier scaled with zero additional headcount

By 2017, Elsevier’s rapidly growing publishing portfolio had spawned multiple Google AM360 networks. Each was created to meet the needs of a local commercial team, but the instances were never brought together, so operators wasted countless hours switching log‑ins, duplicating placements and trying to stitch together reports from systems that did not talk to each other.

At the same time, the management team wanted to keep operating costs sustainable while diversifying revenue beyond on‑site display. Newsletters need to reach large and highly engaged audiences, yet there was no native application to serve or measure advertising inside email. With a small in‑house adops team, quarterly volume spikes had already pushed the team to capacity. Adding new channels or rationalising platforms risked overloading them and missing out on revenue. 

Elsevier turned to adops.com. Instead of a fixed retainer, the service runs on a bank‑of‑hours model: Elsevier draws down expert time when needed for migrations, trafficking, QA, or holiday cover, then dials back when internal capacity is sufficient.

Phase 1 - Consolidation: 

adops.com merged all AM360 networks into one single deployment. The team cleaned up duplicate placements, aligned settings, and re‑tested delivery across key templates, giving Elsevier a single source of truth for campaign trafficking and reporting. Since they now buy AM360 through adops.com’s reseller agreement, ad‑serving costs dropped immediately.

Phase 2 - Growth: 

With the ad stack streamlined, attention shifted to new revenue. adops.com’s proprietary platform, *Email Ad Connector (EAC), wraps Google tags in standards‑compliant HTML, allowing newsletter placements to be trafficked and reported inside AM360 while still rendering the emails correctly. A high‑impact prestitial template was also introduced, giving sales teams a premium placement without relying on additional vendors.

• Efficiency. Multiple AM360 networks collapsed into one; removing redundant ad‑serving fees and simplifying finance reconciliation.
• New revenue. Newsletter inventory now attracts direct and programmatic spend without impacting editorial workflows.
• Elastic expertise. Elsevier scales up specialist consultancy support during traffic peaks and back down afterwards, avoiding long procurement cycles and hefty recruitment fees. What’s more, a bench of senior talent, who work with different publishers every day, can recommend solutions to novel problems at speed.