Entertainment industry case study
Mr. Paparazzi: Monetising a celebrity gossip website
What did Mr. Paparazzi want to do?
Celebrity gossip blog Mr. Paparazzi.com was launched in November 2007. Backed by Darryn Lyon's celebrity
photo agency Big Pictures, the site had the largest online photo database in the UK, but no online traffic
and no visibility on the major search engines.
Mr. Paparazzi needed a cost-effective way to drive high volumes of awareness traffic to ultimately monetise the new property.
How did Tug help them do it?
From launch, Tug developed a PPC campaign focused on driving cheap traffic from the Google Content network.
The site was optimised for the most-searched keywords in the vertical. Content and code were also optimised, and the content management system was improved to increase the effectiveness of daily posts.
In January 2008, we started link building and supported this with PR and celebrity article submissions, fresh posts on news feeds, links with other celebrity blogs and discussions on relevant forums. Exclusive videos were also posted on video directories, tempting people to come to the site.
How did it all go?
In just five months, Mr. Paparazzi.com reached a top-five position on page one of Google, Yahoo and MSN for the most
competitive 'gossip' related keywords. More than 60% of the site's traffic comes from Tug's search activity.
Month on month direct traffic is growing steadily, showing that users who found the site through search are now coming back on their own.
Mr. Paparazzi now boasts over six million page impressions a month and is a viable advertising vehicle.
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