Case Study: LOG.com.tr — +50% Video Revenue in 6 Months

What we walked into01The starting point

LOG.com.tr is one of Türkiye’s long-running technology publications, and it was mid-transition from print magazine to fully online. The readership had come with it, which is the hard part of that transition and the part most magazines get wrong. What had not come with it was the video revenue.

The video was not earning what it should, and the watching experience did not deserve the content. The player technology could not keep up with modern programmatic demand: it could not satisfy the standards premium buyers require, so that demand never bid, and the viewer could feel the difference in every stall and every unfilled slot. LOG has been in the APH network since February 2017; this is the video part of that work.

The diagnosis02The upstream gate

The player is the upstream gate of video revenue. It decides which demand is allowed to bid at all, how many ads a session can carry before the reader leaves, and whether a completed view is even counted. No amount of work downstream — floors, deals, partners — recovers demand that was never eligible. So the sequence had to start at the gate, and everything else had to wait until it was rebuilt.

A rebuilt steel lock gate with water pouring through and one azure winding gear — The gate rebuilt in new steel. Everything downstream filled.

What we did03The work

Four steps, in sequence: the player first, then the standards that let demand bid, then the two dials that set how much the site earns per reader.

01
PlayerThe APH player, deployed and tuned
A/B tests against the old player showed immediate gains in watch time, completed ad views, time on site, cost-per-view and demand — direction reported, magnitudes withheld.
02
StandardsStandards done properly
The player was tailored to Google policy, VAST and IMA SDK requirements — the plumbing that decides which demand can even bid.
03
InjectionAd injection, calibrated from the data
As views accumulated, injection ratios were optimized from what the data showed. Enough ads to earn, never enough to drive the reader away.
04
SalesPremium sales aligned
Pricing and direct-sales strategy adjusted to keep ad intensity optimal while the revenue stream grew.

The gate, then the flow

The player swap was the one change everything else depended on. Once premium demand could bid and completed views were counted, ad injection and direct-sales pricing became dials worth turning, because each turn was now measured against demand that actually existed.

What happened04The result

A 50% uplift in CPM and overall video revenue within six months — on a site whose audience stayed loyal through the transition. Indexed to the period before the swap at 100, six months after it the figure stood at 150. Eight years later, LOG is still with us.

Exhibit 1 · reported by APH Video revenue and CPM, before the swap against six months after. Two bars on a zero axis: the period before the player swap, set to 100, and the month six months after it.

Reported by APH from player and ad-server reporting for the engagement. Indexed to the period before the swap (100); absolute revenue withheld.

The index keeps the shape and hides the currency. Both CPM and overall video revenue rose by the same 50%, which is the signature of a player fix rather than an ad-load increase: the site earned more per impression, not just more impressions. The months in between are not drawn, because the four steps overlapped and a monthly line would imply a precision about which step did what that the data does not support.

Exhibit 2 · what changed, in order Four steps, in sequence. The order the work ran in, from the player that let demand bid to the sales alignment that kept ad intensity optimal.

Ordinal: the strip shows sequence, not dates or duration, and no step is weighted by its share of the result. The player sits first because every later step depended on it.

The player came first because standards, injection and pricing all act on demand the player admits. The two dials at the end are the ones a publisher can keep turning; the two gates at the start are the ones that have to be right once.

Exhibit 3 · the A/B test What the player swap moved, by direction. Five measures from the A/B tests against the old player, shown as the direction each moved. Magnitudes are withheld.

Directional, reported: APH’s A/B tests showed immediate gains on each measure. Cost-per-view improved by falling; the other four improved by rising. No magnitudes are published.

The A/B test is the evidence that the player, not the ad load, did the work. Watch time and time on site rose at the same moment as completed ad views and demand, and cost-per-view fell — a reader staying longer with a player that could finally carry the demand the content deserved.

How to read the numbers05Methodology and caveats

Data source: APH’s player and ad-server reporting for LOG.com.tr, from the engagement. These are APH’s own measurements; no third party has audited them.
Metric: Video revenue and CPM, indexed. Absolute revenue is withheld; the period before the swap is set to 100 and the month six months after it is 150. Both measures rose by the same 50%.
Window: Six months, from the player swap to the full uplift. The year of the swap is not dated on this page; the relationship runs from February 2017 and is ongoing.
Comparison basis: Six months after the swap against the period before it, same property, same inventory. The A/B results are the new player against the old on split traffic; their magnitudes are not published. Neither is a year-on-year comparison.
Seasonality: Not adjusted. Technology readership and video demand move through the year, and a six-month window will carry some of that. The figures are as reported, not seasonally corrected.
Results will vary: This is one publisher’s result. Results depend on the starting player, the content, the traffic mix and the direct-sales setup, and we cannot guarantee the same outcome for another property.

The pattern06What we do with this today

LOG is still in the network, eight years on, and the work has since become product. The video demand side of this engagement — the compliant player, the demand that bids because the plumbing is right, the injection tuned from the data — is what Archon Flash SSP now runs for web video publishers. The sequence is the same one we start every video audit with: the player, the standards, then the dials.

Prepared by Archon Programmatic House · archonph.com/case-log-2026.html · Last updated 18 September 2026 · Reported by APH from player and ad-server reporting for the LOG.com.tr engagement

+50% video revenue and CPM in six months, from a player built for monetization.