With Admiral’s help, Golf.com saved money and improved its first-party data strategy
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Golfers are gearheads by nature, and Golf.com knows it.
The small sports publication has been using pop-up giveaways — free clubs, trolleys, apparel — to collect valuable first-party data from readers. In exchange for an email address and a few personal details, visitors get a shot at winning gear they already want.
“Mainly it helps us achieve newsletter emails for newsletter subscriptions,” says Kip Morgan, head of audience development, marketing and analytics at Golf.com. “It gives the site an additional sort of fun, engaging thing of like, ‘Oh, not only can you come and read articles, you can come and win stuff or enter the giveaway.’ It’s kind of fun.”
The strategy illustrates how smaller newsrooms can turn first-party data collection — often seen as a dry, transactional necessity — into something readers actually enjoy. And Golf.com is doing it affordably using Admiral’s Connect module, a tool that has become increasingly important as third-party cookies disappear and privacy laws tighten.
“You have to talk to your visitors,” says Dan Rua, the CEO and co-founder of Admiral. “You have to build a relationship with your visitors. But the Catch-22 is, okay, but don’t do it in a bad way. Don’t mess it up.”
“Our way of thinking is, this should be a dynamic value exchange, right?” Rua says. “It is this mix of value exchanges, and if you think about a demand curve, you know at best 5% of people will ever pull out a credit card for your website. Ninety-five percent will not. But there’s other things they will do. They might do an email address.”
It also helped that Golf.com was already using Admiral for another service, so adding first-party data collection to its bundle also meant saving some money.
Here’s a look at how the site is maximizing its Admiral bundle.
Three reasons to use Admiral
- Admiral’s Connect module lets newsrooms collect first-party data such as email addresses, locations and interests through customizable pop-ups for less than most comparable platforms.
- Publishers can use visitor segmentation to target readers based on interests and self-reported information, potentially increasing advertising and subscription revenue.
- Admiral is one of the first IAB- and Google-certified consent management platforms, helping newsrooms stay compliant with GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulations.
Newsroom overview
Similar to many local news organizations, Golf.com is a small newsroom with about 10 full-time editors and reporters. The remote company occasionally works with freelancers.
Golf.com was founded as a small startup in 1998 by Mike and Kass Lazerow. It grew into a popular online destination for golf news, tips and more. In 2000, the Lazerows sold it to Chipshot, an e-commerce retailer selling custom golf clubs. When the company went bankrupt, the Lazerows fought to buy Golf.com back and rebuild it.
In 2006, Time Inc., bought Golf.com for $24 million to expand its digital reach. In 2018, Meredith purchased Time Inc., and sold Golf.com and Golf Magazine to its current owners, Howard Milstein and Emigrant Capital.
Golf.com reaches its core audience of golf fans with coverage on tournaments, golf gear, helpful tips and more.
Problem: Connecting with readers on a budget
Golf.com carefully evaluates its software vendors annually to see if current tools remain the most effective and affordable options.
“We try to be lean and mean and make sure that we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck,” says Morgan. If a new platform “can give us 95% of what we had in the past for less than 95% of the money,” it’s worth it.
A few years ago, the company realized that one of the tools they were already using could replace another one entirely, saving the small newsroom money.
Golf.com had been using Admiral to “recapture revenue from people who come to the site with ad blockers,” Morgan says. The tool prompts users who have turned on ad blockers with a pop-up, asking them if they are willing to allow cookies and ads to support the site.
Then the team discovered that Admiral had a first-party data service that could replace their email service provider, Sumo.
They decided to cut Sumo and add Admiral’s first-party data service, Connect, to their existing account.
This kind of add-on happens frequently for Admiral. Its ad-block recovery tools are a major entry point for the software provider, and often turn into larger partnerships with publishers.
“Oftentimes someone will just kind of turn on the ad-block recovery because it’s low-hanging fruit, but then it feels like they’re getting the rest of everything else paid for, because the ad-block is paying it,” Rua says.
“Golf really wants to know their people better, and so they’re using our first-party data capture for that,” Rua says.
Solution: First-party data collection via giveaways
As with any migration to a new tool, there were some growing pains. After working with Admiral to build an API and a few other features, Golf.com can now “launch new campaigns with all the functionality” the site needs, Morgan says.
While most publishers use first-party data services like Admiral to drive email newsletter signups and paid subscriptions, Golf.com is also trying something new: giveaways.
Using the lure of free gear to get readers to share personal data turns something that could feel intrusive into something fun. Publishers could offer company swag, a free month of their premium subscription, lunch with a popular columnist or tickets to an event they host or sponsor. It’s also a good way to get advertisers involved in on-site promotions beyond basic ads.
Golf.com recently ran a Stewart Golf Trolley giveaway using Admiral’s Connect. Using Admiral’s editor, the Golf.com team can set up custom, branded pop-ups that prompt readers to enter their email, state, phone number and other personal data. The pop-ups can take over the entire window or appear in a corner and vary in size based on the publisher’s needs.
Golf.com runs giveaways regularly. “There were some times, like during the Masters, where we had sold a giveaway to someone, or promised to feature their product in a giveaway, where we had a couple running, and they ran in rotation,” Morgan says.
The campaigns have been successful based on the number of people signing up. “Certain giveaways do better than others due to better prizes or better times of the year that people are promoting them,” Morgan says.
Once readers have entered a giveaway, Golf.com can get more people subscribed to its newsletters and grow overall readership for the site. “We use Zapier to connect those emails automatically into our Sailthru ESP (email service provider),” Morgan says.
“We use [the giveaways] to grow emails that will then grow further engagement, because we’ll be sending them our newsletters,” Morgan says.
The first-party data Golf.com collects through its giveaways provides more than just newsletter signups for the site. It also helps the publisher better connect with its loyal readers through targeted promotions.
Although it took time for Admiral to build the state entry dropdown into the tool, it has been worth it.
“By getting people to self identify where they live, that can help us sometimes,” Morgan says. “If we’re looking to do regional promotions to travel destinations in a certain location, we would say, “send them to the state or these groups of states,” based on the self-declared geo information” collected in Admiral through the giveaway popups.
Those readers can get targeted information about golf tournaments, courses and other events based on where they live.
Impact: A better experience for readers and big cost savings
“We have driven tens of thousands of emails a year” with Admiral, Morgan writes in an email.
He adds that “our 2025 conversion rates impressions vs. emails were ~0.5%,” which is slightly below the 0.7% to 1% Golf.com used to see with its previous tool, Sumo.
Although the numbers are down, Morgan says that Golf.com still considers the switch to Admiral to be a success in terms of cost savings and an improved reader experience.
With Admiral, Golf.com was “able to eliminate the occurrence of two pop-ups on the site, which happened when we were using both Sumo for giveaways and Admiral for our Ad blocker revenue recovery efforts,” Morgan writes.
The team also appreciates that Admiral is responsive to their requests for changes and new features. At the end of the day, the biggest win for Golf.com’s small newsroom is the money saved.
“For us, the single Admiral platform was more cost-affordable than having two different ones.”
Security and privacy
One of Admiral’s core offerings is its privacy consent management platform, so the company is no stranger to privacy regulations.
Admiral’s internal security policy is based on the principle of least-privilege access, so only people and systems that have a clear need for the data are able to access it. The company’s Access Control Platforms use attribute-based rules to determine who can have access to a publisher’s copyrighted content. Access is granted or blocked in real time based on the device the visitor is using, their behavior, and whether they are a human or a bot
Admiral’s products are designed to maintain strict data segregation; customer data is isolated and never shared between clients or third parties. All data is secured using industry-standard encryption. “Transport Layer Security (TLS 1.2 or later) is mandated for all data transmission over the public Internet, and data is encrypted at rest,” Admiral said in an emailed statement.
Admiral’s product development process is guided by a privacy-by-design approach. The company conducts privacy impact assessments to ensure compliance with regulations like the GDPR and CCPA. During development cycles, Admiral ensures that all code changes are reviewed by at least two developers. The company uses automated security scanning for static analysis and vulnerability detection.
“Admiral is a pioneer in privacy consent, as one of the first ten IAB and Google-certified Consent Management Platforms in the world,” the company said. “Admiral is dedicated to not only meeting data privacy standards for its copyright access control platform but also providing services and tools that help publishers meet their regulatory obligations, regardless of a visitor’s jurisdiction.”
Verdict: Affordable first-party data
Admiral’s budget-friendly pricing model and strong focus on helping newsrooms build reader relationships make it a strong option for smaller organizations that need an affordable way to collect and activate first-party data.
Golf.com’s giveaway strategy demonstrates how a small newsroom can use Admiral to collect first-party data in a way that engages readers. The savings achieved by using Admiral for both ad-block recovery and first-party data made it the right choice for the outlet.
Admiral’s Connect first-party data service starts at $50 a month, with pricing that scales based on monthly page views.
Alternatives to Admiral for first-party data
Most first-party data tools tend to be expensive. None of the main competitors listed here publish their pricing publicly the way Admiral does.
BlueConic: Offers unified visitor profiles and granular segmentation. Best for organizations that need robust marketing integrations. (Read the Help Desk’s write-up on how The Post and Courier is using BlueConic here.)
Permutive: Features built-in clean room and data collaboration that allows newsrooms to match segments to advertisers without revealing personally identifiable information. Best for privacy-focused publishers prioritizing programmatic monetization and large-scale audience segmentation.
TripleLift (previously 1plusX): Uses AI modeling to build unified audience profiles and predictive modeling to infer demographics and behavior. Best for publishers focused on a programmatic strategies with strong privacy compliance.
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