National Park Foundation
The Challenge
The National Park Foundation needed to build broader awareness among high-value audiences — not through a direct-response fundraising campaign, but through a premium editorial partnership that could deepen understanding of NPF’s role and move readers toward greater engagement.
NPF also needed to introduce its mission and urgency to a new, high-potential audience—and do it in a way that felt true to the organization’s voice, donor promise, and the moment parks needed support.
This wasn’t a single-message assignment. It was a cross-functional effort spanning multiple stakeholders, teams, and donor perspectives, with one central requirement: tell the right story, for the right audience, at the right moment—and align everyone behind it.
What I did
Led story strategy and alignment across stakeholders
Clarified the core narrative: what the audience needed to understand, feel, and do after encountering the campaign.
Translated NPF’s broad mission and donor priorities into a focused editorial story built for a premium, credibility-driven environment.
Shaped messaging around trust, urgency, and shared responsibility — ensuring the campaign felt like a meaningful public-facing story, not just paid media.
Coordinated input across internal teams and NYT partners to align the story with organizational priorities, audience expectations, and donor realities.
Built the measurement foundation
Established a KPI model across awareness, engagement, owned-site behavior, and secondary conversion signals.
Connected NYT platform metrics with NPF-owned analytics to evaluate both reach and quality of attention.
Defined an ROI-adjacent framework that included CPV delivery, CPM, cost-per-engagement, cost-per-email signup, cost-per-donation, revenue vs. spend, and equivalent media value.
Helped create a repeatable approach for evaluating future premium editorial and media partnerships.
Interpreted performance across the full funnel
Distinguished between channels that drove scale and channels that drove deeper engagement.
Framed direct traffic lift as a directional brand-awareness signal, while accounting for concurrent NPF campaigns and seasonal interest.
Identified editorial referral traffic as the strongest source of qualified attention compared with display-driven traffic.
Synthesized campaign results into recommendations for future investment, including continued premium editorial, expanded newsletter placements, improved podcast measurement, and stronger direct-traffic baselining.
The Results
The campaign delivered strong brand visibility
Direct traffic to nationalparks.org increased 41.6% vs. the recalculated pre-campaign baseline during the full campaign flight.
During Month 1, direct traffic averaged +34% sessions vs. baseline.
Engagement rate increased by 4.9 points vs. baseline during Month 1.
While other NPF efforts were active during the same period, the timing and quality of traffic signals were consistent with the NYT campaign contributing to increased brand visibility.
Paid post engagement exceeded NYT benchmarks
The paid editorial feature outperformed NYT benchmarks across core engagement metrics.
Engaged time improved from 0:38 to 0:40 during Month 1, above the 0:36 benchmark.
Scroll depth improved from 28% to 30%, above the 27% benchmark.
Outbound CTR to NPF improved from 1.84% to 2.11%, exceeding the 1.84% benchmark.
By the end of the campaign, the paid post delivered 0:41 average engaged time, 29% scroll depth, and 2.18% outbound CTR.
Trackable traffic and attention increased
Sessions to NPF properties attributable to NYT placements grew 28% from Period 1 to Period 2, increasing from 1,874 to 2,391.
Across the full flight, NYT-attributed sessions totaled 13,169.
Video ad units drove the majority of attributable traffic, while article referral traffic delivered significantly stronger engagement.
Editorial referral visitors engaged at roughly 3.5x the rate of display ad visitors, showing that the story generated deeper attention than standard paid traffic.
The partnership overdelivered on media value
The paid post generated 57,199 CPV-driven page views, reaching 392% of the contracted goal.
NYT delivered 42,616 bonus views beyond the contracted guarantee.
At the contracted $3 CPV rate, overdelivered page views represented approximately $128K in equivalent media value.
Including added-value impressions, total equivalent media value approached $144K.
The total value received represented roughly 1.8x the original $175K investment,
