What Is A Media Kit? (And How to Make an Awesome One)

A media kit is simply a summary of a website and the opportunities to advertise there, generally prepared for potential clients or media buying agencies who are trying to determine where their client should be spending their marketing budget. If you’re trying to sell ads directly (as opposed to monetizing your display ads through a network such as AdSense), your media kit will be one of the most important documents you make; it can be the difference between selling out your at inventory at premium CPMs and striking out completely. (To receive more monetization tutorials like this one, subscribe to our free email newsletter.)

Media Kit Basics

Before you start building your media kit, understand how you’ll be using it and what it should include:

• Why? Why make a media kit? The primary goal is to tell potential advertisers why they should be advertising on your site and what exactly you can offer them if they run a campaign with you.
• Who? It’s important to keep in mind that the audience for your media kit is very different than the audience for your site. Media kits are made for media buyers, who often aren’t experts on your site’s niche (more on the ramifications of this below).
• What? Where? Media kits should generally be created as PDF documents that are available for download on your website. As a rule of thumb, a good length is anywhere between three and ten pages.
• When? Before you start outreach to potential advertisers, you need to have at least a rough draft of your media kit locked and loaded.
• How? This is the toughest question to answer; below are step-by-step instructions for how to build a media kit.

Steps To Building A Media Kit

Building a compelling media kit seems like an overwhelming task for many publishers. But if broken down into a few simple steps, this whole process becomes very manageable. Here’s our step-by-step guide:

Step #0: Should You Sell Ads Directly?

Before you start making an awesome media kit, ask yourself a few questions about your site to determine if you should even be trying to sell ads directly at this point (specifically, ask yourself these four questions). Setting up direct ad sales relationships is a very time consuming process, and many website owners may be better off spending their time elsewhere (at least for now). Think about these four questions before you kick off the media kit process. Even if you’re certain that you should be selling directly, asking yourself these questions can help to properly frame the process of building a media kit.

Step #1: Collect Data On Your Audience

A primary goal of the media kit is to convey to advertisers just how unique and valuable your audience is. In order to do that, you need to know more than just how many daily visitors you get. Here are some of the most basic and common questions advertisers will want your media kit to answer:

• How old is the audience?
• What’s the breakdown between males and females?
• What percentage of visitors have kids?
• What’s the average annual income / total wealth of visitors?
• Buying Habits

There are several ways to collect good data about your audience, including many free resources. Check out our detailed guide on how to quantify your audience and get the stats you need to make an impressive media kit.

Step #2: Make An Intro

Think of a media kit as having three primary objectives:

1. Introduce the reader to your site
2. Explain why advertisers should be on your site
3. Explain exactly how advertisers can spend money on your site

The first objective should be short and sweet; give the reader a quick overview of your site without getting too sophisticated or going on for too long. Hit the high points: what topic(s) does your site cover, what type of content does it contain, and why to visitors come to you. The media kit for MensHealth.com accomplishes this nicely; the first two pages clearly convey the type of content the site features and why its users go there:

Keep in mind that the people who will be (hopefully) seeing this media kit may be hearing about your site for the very first time. They also don’t have a ton of time to spend learning the ins and outs of every new site they come across, so it’s up to you to communicate the highlights and voice of your site as concisely as possible.

Here’s the second page from Men’s Health, which contains a “Mission Statement”:

Step #3: All About Your Audience

Once you’ve made the intro it’s time to get into the sales pitch: why advertisers should have a presence on your site. The easiest way to do this is to prove that you have a unique and valuable audience that they will want to reach. The more stats you can show here the better; this section of a media kit should be as quantitative as possible. There are four general types of statistics that you can show to demonstrate how valuable your audience is:

1. Engagement. These stats communicate facts such as size of audience (number of unique visitors and pageviews) and growth (increase in visitors over past year), as well as level of engagement. Consider showing metrics such as average time on site, percentage of traffic from return visitors, and number of pageviews per visit. All of these stats can be found in Google Analytics.
2. General Demographics. You’ll want to share some basic demographic stats such as age and gender distribution and income and education levels. Quantcast is a free and easy way to get this type of information.
3. Niche-Specific Characteristics. In addition to the basic demographics, you’ll ideally show some survey data that applies specifically to your niche. For example, if you’re creating a media kit for a site for car enthusiasts, you may want to show what percentage of your audience is expecting to buy a new car this year. This detailed information takes a bit more work to get; you’ll need to run some kind of site survey and ask your readers for their input.
4. Social Media Following. If you have a significant presence on social media, let potential advertisers know. This information can be pretty basic: Twitter followers and Facebook Likes are sufficient to get the point across.

Check out page 3 of the Entrepreneur.com media kit for a great example of a killer “stats page”:

Step #4: Advertising Opportunities

Once you’ve (hopefully) convinced readers that they should be advertising on your website, show them exactly how they can advertise on your website. This can be as simple as screenshots of your website that show where advertisers can expect to see their creative. Of course, more unique placements should be illustrated as well.

Below is a page from theCHIVE.com’s media kit (click to enlarge) showing off the goods:

Step #5: Go The Extra Mile

At this point, you’re done; you should have a functional media kit that you can use in your ad sales efforts. But there are a few relatively easy tasks that you can complete to make your media kit stand out a bit more:

1. Throw in some images. A few slick pictures in your media kit can make all the difference in the world. Buy a few images from a site like Photodune (they’ll cost you a buck each) and insert into logical places. 
2. Add Testimonials. If your site has received any positive press or if you have users who have said (or would be willing to say) kind things about you, include some testimonials in your media kit! The Weekly Standard media kit has an extensive testimonial section.
3. Include a “Past Advertisers” slide. If you’ve ever had advertisers run on your site, you might want to leverage their brands as a proof of quality. Basically, show off the brands that have marketed their products on your site; if it’s good enough for them, it will be good enough for some of the other companies you’re going after.

Step #6: Create Rate Cards and Spec Sheets

Once your media kit is complete, there are a couple of follow-up tasks that you’ll want to tackle as well. If you have any luck with ad sales, it won’t be long before a media buyer asks you to produce a rate card and/or spec sheet. We’ll be publishing guides on producing these documents shortly; sign up for the free MonetizePros newsletter to get them delivered to your inbox.

Tips For Making A Killer Media Kit

We’ll leave you with some general tips for assembling your first media kit; if you want us to take a look when you’re done, become a MonetizePros member and post it in our forum:

1. Keep It Simple. Your goal is to tell people a lot about your site with not a lot of real estate. Act as if you’re explaining your website to your grandmother; avoid technical jargon and just stick to simple descriptions.
2. A Number Is Worth A Thousand Words. When painting a picture of your audience, do it with cold, hard stats. Numbers (such as average age, income, and gender breakdown) tell a lot about your site in a very precise way. Check out our post on how to quantify your audience if you need help coming up with reliable numbers.
3. Don’t Be Afraid To Brag. A media kit is a chance to show off; there’s no reward for being humble, so find the presentation and numbers that flatter your work.

Examples Of Media Kits

For some real-world examples of media kits that effectively communicate the value of the site to potential advertisers, be sure to check out our feature on Seven Media Kits That “Make It Rain”. And if you have more examples of media kits you love, let us know on this thread in the free MonetizePros forum.

If you’re looking for something very basic, we also have a free media kit generator and a sample media kit template.