In a competitive digital landscape, Nigeria’s Legit has emerged as a leading example of how technology, user behaviour, and strategic insight can converge to drive consistent revenue growth.

During last week’s INMA Africa Media Revenue Summit, Julie Arobieke, sales team lead for the news company, offered a behind-the-scenes look at how the platform identified challenges, reframed its approach, and implemented creative monetisation strategies to outperform in key markets.

“Legit uses smart technology to discover user behaviour and how well to monetise traffic … . You cannot monetise your traffic properly if you do not understand your consumers,” Arobieke said.

At the outset, Legit.ng framed the core problem: Many publishers experience stagnant revenue due to outdated monetisation setups, poorly optimised layouts, and a failure to leverage behavioural insights. These issues collectively result in lower engagement, missed opportunities, inefficient decisions, and ultimately underperforming revenue systems.

Technology means nothing without people

The key insight guiding Legit.ng’s evolution is that technology alone cannot solve these problems. Instead, tech must be aligned with real human behaviour. 

According to Arobieke, their entire transformation rests on three pillars:

1. Learning from user behaviour.
2. Optimising ad placement and formats.
3. Adopting revenue-driving technologies without compromising user experience. 

“After learning their [user] behaviour, we optimise ad placement … then we adopt how to drive revenue,” Arobieke said.

One of the most striking insights shared in her presentation revolved around the stark differences in CPM (cost per mille) rates. While some publishers manage to command US$2 CPM, others are stuck at just US$0.20. 

The team at Legit broke this down into four factors:

1. Advertiser demand.
2. User intent.
3. Audience location.
4. Ad placement effectiveness.

How Legit turned insight into strategy

Three core strategies helped the company capture more value:

1. Target high-value niches like crypto, real estate, and business.
2. Focus on high-earning markets, especially the United States and Canada.
3. Create immersive, user-friendly ad formats.

One key challenge was the ineffectiveness of video ads in African markets. Due to poor Internet speeds and low ad demand, these units underperformed. To solve this, Legit developed a custom “catfish” banner that loaded faster and performed better in Africa while retaining traditional video layouts for other regions.

Another overlooked opportunity was the category pages, which weren’t monetised despite attracting valuable U.S. traffic. By adding a video slider unit to these pages, Legit.ng generated an additional US$1,000 per month in revenue. 

Arobieke added: “Instead of leaving that inventory empty and losing money on that inventory, it was converted into something else — something not disruptive, something that did not affect the overall setup of the site.” 

To avoid degrading user experience with too many traditional ad formats, Legit.ng introduced codeless side rail anchor ads on desktop. These ads used previously ignored screen space and were implemented quickly using Google Ad Manager’s no-code tools.

Planning for the future

Staying ahead in a fast-changing market means, Arobieke said:

• Continuously testing new ad tools and formats.

• Letting real user behaviour guide decision-making.

• Adapting and innovating to unlock new revenue potential.

“When you put technology in place, it shows you the behaviour — not only of your user this time now but the behaviour of your advertisers over time.”

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