Why Apartment Therapy (and other publishers) are doubling down on engagement.
From Apartment Therapy’s sponsor-backed tools to MotorTrend’s interactive awards and Digital Trends’ AI gamification, publishers are finding fresh ways to keep audiences engaged. Here’s how they’re turning stickiness into loyalty—and loyalty into revenue.
Social referrals are slowing to a trickle. Zero-click searches are stealing your traffic. AI crawlers are pulling your content into their walled gardens without so much as a thank you.
It’s not the first time media owners have faced this problem. The nemeses are just shinier.
Picture it. It’s the mid-aughts. Print was in decline. Broadband ushered in the era of always-on, as social media exploded (say hello to your blinged-out MySpace page). Bloggers, livestreamers, and MetaCafe creators were jockeying for audience attention.
And that little microblogging platform asking, “What are you doing now?” hit six million users by the end of 2008.
Media owners still had the eyeballs. But monetization—and keeping audiences engaged—was an uphill battle.
Media Owners Meet Web 2.0
Some publishers leaned into new consumer behaviors, launching editorial and advertising products with user-generated content and multimedia to turn passive readers into active communities.
Back then, I was hired by FastCompany to lead community strategy. We built a hybrid editorial/ user-generated platform on Drupal. Sixty-one thought leaders across several verticals—marketing, design thinking, social innovation, among others—published alongside FastCompany’s print editors. Readers created profiles, joined moderated groups, and shared ideas.
We also launched FastCompany.TV, with Robert Scoble as our first creator. Everything was built to keep people logged in and coming back. But, as new media history shows, we were ahead of our time.
Fast-forward to today. Different decade, same problem. How do you get them to come back tomorrow and the day after?
Enter Stickiness 2.0
Today, stickiness means building destinations AI search can’t replicate and social media can’t replace.
Apartment Therapy Media—with brands like Apartment Therapy, The Kitchn, Cubby, and Dorm Therapy—is rolling out sponsor-friendly tools that solve everyday problems while pulling audiences deeper into their ecosystem.
“We’re trying to build more of a destination where we have sticky features and tools for consumers to interact, stay longer, come back more often, and engage with the site,” Jeff Olson, SVP of Revenue Operations at AT Media, told me.
The Kitchn’s recipe-saving and meal-planning tools, Cubby’s parenting tips by life stage, Apartment Therapy’s room design quizzes and mood boards, and Dorm Therapy’s student-life hacks. All act as magnets for email signups, memberships, and targeted ad products.
“That’s been one of the big objectives—driving more return visits for users, more sessions in a month, and higher engagement time. When you sign up for a newsletter, we can increase monetization,” Olson explained.
“Where we have the hashed email, we get better match rates on the direct side, and we can use email more as an engagement tool, not just a newsletter.”
AI plays a role, too. From tagging metadata to powering tools like room layout planners and precision audience targeting. But the mission stays human. Make it easy for people to find what they need and want to return.
Apartment Therapy projects a 26% year-over-year revenue increase, credited to sponsor-funded sticky tools like searchable Before & Afters, a house tour hub, and image inspiration browsers.
Olson will share more during his AdMonsters Sell Side keynote, Experiences That Stick: How Apartment Therapy Turns Engagement, Data, and AI Into Revenue, on August 18, in Nashville.
But AT Media isn’t the only one tackling these challenges head-on. MotorTrend, Digital Trends, TIME, Newsweek, and The New York Times are also getting a jump.
The Publisher Remix
MotorTrend leans on its Car of the Year franchise—a blend of editorial authority, interactive voting, and community-driven features that keep auto fans coming back. The award fuels conversation across streaming, social, and live events, drawing superfans while offering premium sponsorship opportunities. Plus, its digital ecosystem delivers a 5X higher CTR than Google benchmarks for targeted campaigns, turning passion into measurable action.
Digital Trends powers engagement with AI-powered gamification, embedding Versus-powered polls, quizzes, and prediction games directly into tech coverage. Since 2021, the publisher has leveraged first-party data personalization, serving up tailored commerce content and recommendations, lifting CTRs by 50% and engagement by 20% in targeted campaigns.
TIME’s AI rollout—paired with the open digital archives dating back to 1923—has reportedly driven deeper user exploration and higher return visits. The publisher also struck landmark licensing deals with six AI companies, including OpenAI and Perplexity, delivering both fixed and variable revenue streams.
Newsweek’s Interviewed™ platform and AI Impact editorial series have expanded the brand’s reach to 100M+ people monthly, bringing in new audiences around AI leadership. Its viral, trend-tracking, and recirculation features boost session times by surfacing relevant content loops in real time—a tactic that’s won editorial awards and forged new brand partnerships.
The New York Times’ $20–$25M /year licensing deal with Amazon is a major new revenue stream, but its stickiness play comes from habit-forming features. Personalized news briefings, daily puzzle streaks, and AI-powered content recommendations boost return visits and dwell time. This aligns with industry research that personalization can double engagement rates and increase session length by up to 40%.
According to industry analysis, AI-powered personalization, sticky video players, and shoppable galleries can boost session duration and conversion rates. Product comparison tools drive repeat visits, while interactive and video elements lift engagement and CTRs.
Turning Stickiness Into Sellable Attention
But engagement alone doesn’t close deals.
Stickiness builds relationships. Attention metrics make it monetizable. It provides hard proof that engaged users improve attention scores and drive renewals.
“By offering these measurements, you’re essentially providing a client with a journey that results in renewals,” Jen Castillo, Executive Director of Ad Operations at Dow Jones, told me recently.
Castillo will detail Dow Jones’ attention-driven ad strategy during AdMonsters Sell Side Summit Nashville on August 18. For them, adjacency to news content isn’t a liability. It’s a premium when attention is high.
Meeting Audiences Where They Are
Not every engagement play is about pulling people in. Sometimes you have to meet them out in the wild.
BuzzFeed pushes quizzes, commerce content, and interactive features that thrive on TikTok and Instagram. The Washington Post is testing WhatsApp briefings for quick, global news delivery. TIME places its brand inside generative search answers through licensing deals, turning that exposure into a path back to owned channels.
You can’t always wait for your audience to find you. You have to show up in their feeds, inboxes, and AI-powered results, giving them a reason to enter your home.
The Beat Goes On
Two decades ago, we learned that community could carry a brand further than any algorithm. We built places where people wanted to spend time—and they did.
In 2025, the publishers winning are doing the same thing—only with sharper tools, smarter data, and a mix of on-site and off-site plays.
The tech will change, but the heartbeat stays the same. You have to build experiences that people want to interact with. Again and again.