Thingiverse Increased Ad Revenue by 41% after switching to Publift

About Thingiverse

Thingiverse is a vibrant design community for discovering, creating, and sharing 3D printable objects. As the world's largest 3D printing community, it fosters creativity by encouraging users of all skill levels to explore and remix designs. Thingiverse attracts over 400k unique visitors monthly globally, offering a dynamic space for both experienced designers and newcomers to 3D printing.

The Challenge

Thingiverse was acquired by UltiMaker and was working with another monetisation partner at that time. While their existing partner provided standard optimisations, Thingiverse was facing challenges around:

• Lack of support: Thingiverse’s team expressed that adequate support was not being provided.
• Lack of innovation: The team also felt the approach to improving their ad setup was not proactive.

“We had a steady flow of revenue but no real potential for growth.”
- Merel Deklein, Front-end Developer at Thingiverse.

“We had a steady flow of revenue but no real potential for growth.” said Merel Deklein, the front-end developer at Thingiverse. Recognising this challenge, we were confident in our ability to be the growth-focused business partner they needed.

The Approach

Before Thingiverse fully switched to Publift, the Thingiverse team underwent a testing period where Publift handled 50% of the traffic on their site while their previous partner maintained the remaining. 

During this process, every change was run via an A/B test to ensure we supported Thingiverse’s goals of:

• Increasing revenue: Revenue was carefully tracked with every change, aiming for a positive revenue impact or, at minimum, maintaining current performance.
• Maintaining a good user experience: A/B tests of optimisations were gradually rolled out to give users adequate time to adapt to changes without disrupting their experience.
• Ensuring feedback from the user forum was acknowledged: Feedback from Thingiverse’s user forum and internal team was applied before launching new optimisations.
• Progressive growth: Each change started with 5% of traffic, gradually increasing to 100%, ensuring alignment with the above priorities. 

At the end of the testing period, Thingiverse decided to partner with Publift.

Service

While performance uplift was a crucial factor in Thingiverse’s decision, the ultimate choice to work with Publift was driven by our ability to meet their service level needs. 

“We see that we work as a team. It doesn’t feel like “Publift is working for us”. We’re working together to move towards this goal and it also ties in to what we want to achieve within the Thingiverse team.”
- Ece Cengizoğlu, Marketing Specialist at Thingiverse.  

‍

Visual Changes

There were two ad units changes that immediately brought about a revenue uplift: 

‍Sticky footer (desktop) 

In October 2024, we introduced a sticky footer unit. 

‍

Recognising its significant revenue potential, the initial plan was to implement it across all desktop pages. However, after running the unit on 5% of traffic for a week, feedback from users and the Thingiverse team highlighted concerns about its impact on user experience.

To balance user experience and revenue potential, we made a few key adjustments:

• Maintained the same ad density
  We replaced the first leaderboard ad unit on the “Thing” page with a house creative to avoid overwhelming visitors.

House creative in the first leaderboard placement.

‍

• Implemented the unit in impactful placements
  Instead of placing the ad unit throughout the entire site, we conducted an analysis to determine the best locations for the ad placement.
• Integrated custom ad functions
  Our integration consultant configured a collapsible sticky footer, so the unit disappears when users scroll to the bottom of the page, keeping the footer content accessible and unobstructed.

With this, the addition of the sticky footer unit brought about an average revenue uplift of 14.8%.

Web Interstitial (desktop and mobile)

A web interstitial ad unit was implemented during the testing stage. After gradually rolling the unit out, it brought about a revenue uplift of 3.5%.

“In terms of ads, we were already seeing a constant stream of income, but the problem we had was that the solution was to always add more ads, and that was the only solution that was offered. And then we just felt like it was stagnant.”
- Ece Cengizoğlu, Marketing Specialist at Thingiverse.

Non-Visual Changes

While ad unit optimisations significantly boosted revenue, there are limits to how much can be adjusted without affecting user experience.

“More ads meant a different user experience, and we’re trying to ensure a good user experience because we want to keep our users,”
- Merel Deklein, Front-end Developer at Thingiverse.

At Publift, we conducted 16 Yield Experiments to achieve incremental revenue growth through non-visual optimisations. These experiments resulted in an ~8.5% uplift, with the most notable improvements coming from timeout adjustments and leveraging identity solutions. 

We initiated these experiments from day-one of testing to ensure consistent progress towards optimised results.

Publift as Google Certified Publishing Partner

While the numerical results spoke for themselves, Publift’s recognition as a GCPP played a crucial role in solving a significant challenge for Thingiverse.

During the transition, our team identified a critical issue: Thingiverse lacked ownership of key accounts post-acquisition. Leveraging our status as a GCPP, we directly contacted Google to resolve the issue seamlessly.

“The entire team worked together with us to reach out to Google to get our account back. And now because of Publift, we have access to it!”
- Ece Cengizoğlu, Marketing Specialist at Thingiverse.

The Results 

Since the migration to Publift, Thingiverse’s ad revenue has increased by 41% YoY (2023 vs 2024).

The CPM trend for Thingiverse has seen a notable upward change since 11th August 2024. 

Fuse Load RPM has been trending upwards since fully migrating to Publift.

We were able to gradually increase viewability since the transition to Publift.

Looking for a partner that combines proactive support with ongoing optimisations to enhance ad performance? Reach out to Publift today to let us help you grow while maintaining a seamless user experience.