Case study: This new approach to article lock kept it free, yet resulted in higher conversions & increased revenue

Discover how The Shift News, an investigative news platform from Malta, pioneered a ‘soft lock’ strategy using rewarded ads to boost revenue by 68%, all without gating their investigative journalism behind a paywall.

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For years, The Shift News has been at the forefront of investigative journalism, reporting without compromise, while also innovating its revenue structure, unlike many of its peers in the region.

In 2023, it introduced the Corporate Democratic Responsibility (CDR) program, designed to help investigative journalism in politically volatile environments.

Here is an explanation from a case study we published at the time:

“The CDR Program addresses this gap by forming alliances with smaller companies and entrepreneurs who share the newsroom’s values and mission. These silent partners, called “sponsors,” provide recurring monthly donations, typically in the range of hundreds to thousands of euros, without seeking public recognition for their contributions. This discreet yet impactful support allows newsrooms to maintain their independence and continue their critical work. Although the sponsors are offered the option to advertise on TSN’s website, most of them choose not to use it and prefer to support The Shift quietly to be protected from potential political repercussions.”

Two years later, The Shift is pioneering a new approach to monetization with the latest technology available: rewarded ads.

Its revenue consists of multiple streams, ranging from the Corporate Democratic Responsibility program to donations and programmatic advertising.

Before summer 2025, the FatChilli team approached The Shift to test a new approach: soft-locking parts of the website or content. This would allow them to achieve higher income than regular ads without gating access for payment.

In other words, the outlet was trying to solve a problem many news publications now face: what to do when ad revenue doesn’t bring enough income to sustain journalism, and scaling audience revenue is taking longer than expected. 

Is there a middle ground? Yes, there is, and The Shift News proved it can be a sustainable option even for a publication without millions of daily website visitors.

The experiment: Soft-lock all articles with rewarded ads

The Shift News decided to test rewarded ads, a new ad format that has just come out of beta testing this year. The format sounds familiar, as it has been a staple in mobile apps, especially in gaming, for a long time.

Rewarded ads for the web, however, are a new thing.

The Shift’s innovative approach kept in line with its promise not to exclude anyone from reading their stories, while also understanding the format’s shortcomings.

“We were hoping for an increase in revenue as part of a multi-revenue stream model we adopted to deliver on our mission to keep our investigative content free,” said Caroline Muscat, editor-in-chief at The Shift News.

The outlet has been running programmatic advertising for a while, so seeing ads on the website next to articles was not new to its audience.

The change has been in the way the ads were shown to the website visitors. To finish reading a story, a soft lock appeared, explaining that the user must first watch an ad to unlock the rest of the content.

A simple value exchange, but in this case, The Shift was asking for a few seconds of its audience’s time. And the results were amazing, far outperforming benchmarks.

The test ran for a month, and the team monitored all essential KPIs and data: ad revenue, bounce rate, time spent, pages per session, and others.

After the launch of the soft lock with rewarded ads, the average CPM almost doubled (90% month-over-month increase).

They were able to maintain all audience metrics and grow overall ad revenue by 68%.

The CPM for the rewarded ads was north of €40 (yes, you are reading it correctly: forty euros CPM). It is important to note that, as with every ad set up, you can set a floor price with rewarded ads, which was initially set at €20 and later increased to €35.

The results were eye-opening

Apart from the increased ad revenue, the team monitored all metrics regarding their audience behaviour.

But first, let’s make one thing clear. Due to the novelty of the format and also the higher prices advertisers are paying for rewarded ads, the fill rates are lower than you would expect from more mainstream formats.

In the case of The Shift News, during the month of testing, the soft lock appeared in less than 10% of the possible sessions, which represents the actual fill rate. Otherwise, the soft lock did not appear.

So more than 90% of the sessions did not encounter a lock. Yet, ad revenue still almost doubled.

At first sight, the data suggested that the audience spent slightly more time on the website with soft-locked content powered by rewarded ads, and the number of pageviews per user also increased.

This could be explained by the fact that more than a quarter of the readers who encountered the lock decided to unlock the rest of the article. Only one percent who started watching the ad did not finish.

Imagine you have a way to convert 25% of your engaged audience into something that brings you meaningful revenue. For The Shift News, this was eye-opening.

“I would recommend this solution to other publishers – it’s all about striking the right balance so the reader is supported, not overburdened,“ said Muscat.

The overall increase in metrics when the soft lock was activated, although counter-intuitive, comes from the unlocking mechanism: after a reader finishes watching the ad, the page reloads and reveals the rest of the article.

Note: The soft lock appeared after the first four paragraphs, which is enough for an engaged reader to want to read more.

How to get started with rewarded ads and why

The case of The Shift News is just one, albeit very popular, use of the rewarded ads on the web. Soft-locking your articles might seem like a big commitment, especially in this age of quick content and decreasing attention.

The main idea is to bring to the value exchange something that your audience is interested in and you believe it is worth it.

If you are a publisher running a content website, offering soft-locked, detailed information like an ingredient list for a recipe or a map in a city guide, or entry to the comment section might be a good starting point.

Publishers have also experimented with granting access to related content after watching an ad or temporarily unlocking access to all content by giving a ‘temporary pass’ or ‘entry ticket’.

The main idea here is to cater to users who are hesitant to commit to a subscription but are willing to exchange a moment of their attention for access to valuable content.

Nowadays, many publishers are facing the same dilemma: what if we hit the subscription ceiling and would like to better convert the attention of our audience into sustainable revenue?

And others face a different dilemma: what to do about the decreasing revenue from banner ads?

In both cases, rewarded ads represent a solid alternative that is worth trying out.

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