The French culinary publisher increases the value of every page through faster ad delivery, high-impact ad experiences and continuous monetisation optimisation, while preserving user experience.

PARIS, FR / ACCESS Newswire / October 1, 2026 / Opti Digital, the leading AdTech company specialising in publisher revenue optimisation, today announced the results of its collaboration with Chef Simon, one of France’s leading online culinary platforms.

For more than 25 years, Chef Simon has established itself as a leading online culinary reference in France, combining recipes, cooking techniques and contributions from a passionate community. The platform has built a loyal audience of millions of users while maintaining a strong focus on editorial quality and user experience.

When Chef Simon began working with Opti Digital in late 2024, the publisher was looking to strengthen its monetisation strategy and accelerate advertising revenue growth at a time when successive Google updates and changing search behaviours were placing increasing pressure on organic traffic.

With every page view becoming more valuable, Chef Simon needed a partner capable of generating significantly more value from its existing audience without relying on excessive ad density or compromising site performance and user experience.

“What I value most about Opti Digital is how involved the team is in our business. They don’t simply provide technology – they continuously monitor our performance, identify new opportunities and work directly with us to test and improve them,” said Laurent Bazet, Managing Director at Chef Simon. “Even in a much more challenging traffic environment, we’ve been able to generate significantly more value from every page while keeping control over the user experience.”

Quadrupling Page RPM Through a Stronger Monetisation Strategy

Chef Simon deployed Opti Digital’s Ad Manager Hub in December 2024, laying the foundation for a faster and more efficient monetisation strategy.

By the first half of 2026, the strategy had helped Chef Simon quadruple its Page RPM compared with the same period in 2025, reaching approximately €4.3 globally and €5 in France, despite continued pressure on traffic.

Rather than relying on additional ad density, Opti Digital focused on improving monetisation efficiency across the entire revenue funnel, from infrastructure and user behaviour to consent, ad experiences and auction performance.

A Lightweight, High-Performance Monetisation Infrastructure

Through Ad Manager Hub‘s lightweight wrapper infrastructure, Chef Simon benefited from significantly faster ad delivery compared with standard ad stack benchmarks.

The share of ad server calls completed in under two seconds reached 55%, compared with approximately 13% for standard ad stacks. At the same time, calls taking more than four seconds represented just 24%, versus approximately 52% under standard market conditions.

This resulted in ad delivery that was approximately four times faster, increasing the likelihood that impressions would load while still viewable and monetisable while supporting a faster, smoother browsing experience.

For Chef Simon, reducing unnecessary latency became a direct revenue lever, allowing more impressions to be monetised without adding further advertising pressure.

Benchmark based on a sample of wrapper implementations across publishers and AdTech providers. Results may vary depending on configuration and setup.

Increasing the Value of Every Page

With a high-performance technical foundation in place, Opti Digital continuously analysed how Chef Simon could generate more value from its existing audience without simply increasing traditional display advertising.

One opportunity emerged in the journey towards recipes shared by external contributors. Opti Digital identified this high-intent interaction as a natural monetisation moment and worked with Chef Simon to integrate Rewarded Ads before users continued to the full recipe.

The implementation was jointly developed and tested to preserve a seamless user journey. Once activated, Rewarded Ads generated a 15% overall revenue uplift, with CPMs reaching €60 during early testing.

The strategy was then extended to other high-impact ad experiences. Sticky Overlay became one of the contributors to Page RPM growth, while Flying Carpet was introduced across selected mobile placements and increased eCPM by 21% on the affected in-content positions.

These formats enabled Chef Simon to generate greater value from existing traffic while maintaining control over ad density and the overall browsing experience.

Optimising Every Layer Before the Auction

Chef Simon also uses Opti Digital’s Insights Hub to identify monetisation opportunities beyond auction performance alone.

By connecting user behaviour, page performance, consent and monetisation data, Insights Hub helps identify where value may be lost before inventory even enters the auction.

Analysis of Chef Simon’s consent journey showed that its “Accept All” rate was below benchmark. Opti Digital reviewed the experience, recommended UX changes and monitored their impact. Within one week, the “Accept All” rate increased by nearly 10%, unlocking a larger share of higher-value monetisable inventory.

The same approach was applied to page layouts and user journeys. When analytics showed that Chef Simon’s recipe pages were generating fewer ad views because users were scrolling rapidly towards the content, Opti Digital proposed a redesigned layout to better align content consumption with advertising visibility.

This approach enables Opti Digital to optimise the entire revenue funnel – from user behaviour and consent to inventory design, ad viewability, advertising experiences and auction performance.

A Monetisation Team, Not Just a Technology Provider

Behind every optimisation, Chef Simon benefits from ongoing strategic and operational support from Opti Digital’s Account Management, AdOps and Tech teams.

The teams continuously monitor performance, identify opportunities and turn insights into concrete recommendations, whether through page-layout changes, consent optimisation, new advertising experiences or additional demand sources.

Regular performance reviews give Chef Simon visibility into what is being tested, why each change is being made and the impact it delivers.

This model provides access to the expertise of a dedicated monetisation team without requiring the publisher to manage every auction, partner, technical issue and optimisation test internally, making continuous revenue optimisation part of the day-to-day strategy rather than a series of isolated projects.

Driving Sustainable Revenue Growth

By combining faster infrastructure, high-value ad experiences, data-driven optimisation and continuous strategic support, Chef Simon achieved significant performance improvements in the first half of 2026:

  • Page RPM quadrupled compared with H1 2025
  • Approximately €5 Page RPM in France
  • 4x faster ad delivery compared with a standard ad stack
  • +15% overall revenue uplift from Rewarded Ads
  • +21% eCPM on Flying Carpet mobile in-content placements
  • Nearly 10% increase in the “Accept All” consent rate within one week

The collaboration demonstrates how publishers can continue increasing the value of their existing audiences even in a more challenging traffic environment by focusing on monetisation efficiency rather than simply increasing ad density.

“Chef Simon demonstrates how publishers can continue to create more value from every page, even in a challenging traffic environment, by combining faster technology, better data and continuous optimisation,” said Magali Quentel-Reme, CEO at Opti Digital. “Our role is to help publishers identify the right monetisation opportunities while preserving the user experience and maintaining control over their strategy.”

About Chef Simon

For more than 25 years, Chef Simon has established itself as a leading online culinary reference in France, combining recipes, cooking techniques and contributions from a passionate community.

The platform reaches millions of users and has built a loyal audience while maintaining a strong focus on editorial quality and user experience.

About Opti Digital

Opti Digital is a leading AdTech company specialising in digital media monetisation. Through its AI-powered monetisation platform, fast wrapper, proprietary demand and advanced analytics, we help publishers maximise advertising revenue while improving user experience, web performance and operational efficiency.

More than 10,000 websites and apps worldwide, including leading publishers such as Euronews, Ziff Davis, Forbes, Gizmodo, Webedia, Valnet and 1XL, rely on Opti Digital to drive measurable results and long-term growth.

Media Contact
Sara Bigovic
Communications & Events Manager, Opti Digital
sara@optidigital.com
www.optidigital.com

SOURCE: Opti Digital

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