Valnet’s Ji Heon Kim on how the publisher encouraged users to authenticate themselves

With websites covering topics like entertainment (ScreenRant), gaming (Polygon) and automotive (CarBuzz), Valnet caters to users across a wide array of interests.

But according to Ji Heon Kim, Valnet’s head of monetization, Valnet realized it could create more value for its users by encouraging them to subscribe or authenticate themselves.

Maybe a “mass scale” of users wouldn’t sign up for their websites, but perhaps 10% would. And, as Kim puts it, that “10% would still be valuable, and we can do a lot with that 10%.”

“We created more value to [those] users, more exclusive content and high-quality content,” Kim says. “All of that became an initiative on the content side for us to deliver a premium model and give users an incentive to sign up.”

Kim further talked with The Current Podcast about balancing advertiser value, user experience and performance, which he says are “always affecting each other.”