Admiral Launches Admiral Connect

When I saw the announcement about Admiral Connect, it immediately caught my attention. Publishers are always looking for smarter ways to collect and activate first-party data, and Admiral is positioning Connect as a key piece of that puzzle.

While Admiral’s official blog post covers most of the details you need to know, it also sparked a few additional questions for me. So, I reached out to Dan Rua to dive deeper into what Connect really means for publishers, how it fits into the broader concept of Visitor Relationship Management (VRM), and why visitor journeys (yes, plural) are more complex than we often think.

Rob Beeler: Dan, give me the elevator pitch on Admiral Connect. What specific problem does it solve for publishers, and how does it stand out from existing solutions?

Dan Rua: Admiral Connect makes the collection, segmentation, and activation of 0/1st-party data much faster and easier for publishers than current options—closing the ROI loop from data to revenue.

Admiral’s 1-tag, 1-vendor, 1-visitor journey approach eliminates the challenge of integrating data capture across multiple vendors and conflicting point solutions in a publisher’s VRM stack. Connect can also push and pull data from any existing DMP/CDP you’re already using while leveraging that data to drive value in three key ways:

1. Optimizing ad revenue
2. Optimizing visitor journeys and conversions
3. Providing segment analytics to identify which segments perform best (or worst) for revenue optimization

Connect was born from publisher frustrations over high SaaS fees and CFO concerns about the uncertain ROI of DMP/CDP costs. Many asked Admiral to bring a simpler, more cost-efficient solution to market—just like the rest of Admiral’s VRM modules.

We’re focused on closing the loop between visitor journeys, data, revenue, and relationships in no-code ways that work for performance-minded publishers. Even more exciting, we’re iterating quickly with our Public Beta publishers to refine the data activation module of their dreams.

Beeler: Dan, you and I have talked about Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) from the very beginning, and we both agree that publishers need to build stronger relationships with their users. Admiral Connect is built around that idea—but how does it take VRM beyond just a concept and turn it into real, actionable steps that help publishers better engage visitors and use data to drive meaningful outcomes?

Dan: Good question. In fact, we named this new visitor data module “Connect” for a mix of reasons related to VRM:

1. First and foremost, we all instinctively understand what it means to “connect.”

In our personal lives, connection happens when there’s enough exchange of information—likes, dislikes, interests—to build a real relationship. Likewise, this module helps publishers better “connect” with visitors through the exchange of data.

A simple example is asking for a visitor’s first name—just like when meeting someone new—so the next time they return, we can say, “Hi Rob!” in a more personal way. More advanced examples include asking visitors about their next car purchase, favorite sports team, or level of education—insights that can impact ad revenue, subscriptions, and more. Publishers can even ask visitors “How are we doing?” and track responses using an NPS-style KPI to monitor ad, design, and editorial experiences over time.

2. Connect helps “connect the dots” between data and action.

With push-button tools to activate data within an ad stack or visitor journey, Connect makes audience segmentation and insights more action-driven—unlike past DMPs and CDPs, which often act as passive data repositories. For example, if a visitor is a dog person instead of a cat person, a publisher might display a puppy image when prompting them to convert on a future offer. That’s just one way Connect helps turn data into immediate action and real results.

Beyond data capture, this module also connects the dots between on-site actions and audience segments. Every interaction—content consumption, email sign-ups, allowlisting, and more—can be analyzed and acted on much faster than if a publisher were relying on separate analytics, data, and conversion vendors.

3. Connect creates a unified visitor view.

It also makes it easy to bring together data from different sources into a single, comprehensive visitor profile—with simple tools to move data in and out of Connect and sync it across a publisher’s audience, ad, and data stack.

Put simply, VRM has always been the CRM for media publishers. Connect takes VRM beyond just “talking” to visitors—it helps publishers actively guide them toward deeper, data-driven engagement.

Beeler: One mistake publishers make is hitting visitors with too many questions all at once, whether as part of a subscription offer or in exchange for content access. If visitors don’t see the value, they’ll bounce. How does Admiral Connect help me gather the data I need without overwhelming my visitors?

Dan: First, when it comes to asking too many questions, how many is too many in a real-life relationship? It’s not really about the number of questions, but rather the coordination, timing, and progression of them as a relationship develops. Visitors are the same. Asking 10 questions at once would never work, and asking 100 in a week might also be too much, especially if they aren’t framed in the right context. But over time, we naturally learn thousands of things about the relationships we build.

Connect, together with Admiral’s core strength in no-code visitor journey coordination, helps ensure that the right questions reach the right visitor at the right time, avoiding overload. Instead of juggling five different point-solution vendor tags that slow page loads while all trying to ask a visitor the same questions in different ways, Admiral’s one-tag approach coordinates the entire journey. This prevents overload on a single pageview or across days and weeks.

With Admiral, you can even set global frequency caps to ensure visitors are never engaged more than a set number of times per week or month—whether for declared data, subscriptions, privacy consent, adblock messaging, or more. Pro tip: your page load speed also improves with one-tag journey coordination!

I’d also add that asking too many questions in a single engagement is often the result of a rudimentary popup tool that a developer slapped together, rather than a properly structured journey system. Once you have the power of Admiral’s journey system, you can take comfort in progressive profiling over time—asking less in the early days and more as the relationship deepens.

All that said, relationships can’t be one-way. The reason I talk so much about personal relationships is to remind publishers that they have a responsibility to build two-way relationships with their visitors, where both sides deliver value. Don’t just “suck up” data in hopes of using it for some unknown future benefit. Instead, focus on creating value in the moment. Even the smallest gesture—like “Hi Rob, thanks for coming back!”—can put a smile on someone’s face, strengthen relationships, and remind visitors why your site feels more like home than others.

Beeler: Can you elaborate on preference control? Specifically, how can visitors manage or update their personal data? Done well, I’d imagine this level of transparency would go a long way in building visitor trust with a publisher.

Dan: Absolutely. Visitors want control over their data, and publishers need a way to provide that control—with the granularity to manage each data field individually. Connect makes this easy, offering simple, one-click controls for every data point.

Beeler: As I was thinking about this “visitor journey” concept we’ve discussed for so long, it hit me—it’s always visitor journeys, plural. It may not be grammatically ideal, but it’s the reality.

What I mean is, my relationship with a website takes many forms. I might want to reread something so I can share it. I might only have a minute to check in on new content, or I might want to sit down and spend time with long-form articles or videos. As a publisher, I tend to think of the user journey as a straight path—from one-time visitor to (hopefully) a paid subscriber. But the visitor sees it differently. Their journeys aren’t linear. Your thoughts?

Dan: Yes! Exactly. Visitors don’t just have a journey. They have multiple visitor journeys that vary in both depth and breadth of relationship.

For example, a journey that progressively builds a visitor’s first-party data profile with Admiral Connect is an example of going deeper. But journeys also expand horizontally—for instance, a single visitor might allowlist your site, register for an account, follow your brand, download your mobile app, subscribe, or consent to personalized ads.

Ultimately, these multiple journeys combine to form the overall Visitor Experience. And when you layer in metrics like pageview growth, revenue, engagement, ARPV, and LTV, you start to see the full picture of Visitor Relationships.

The stack that enables all of this is your Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) stack—whether that’s a five-vendor Frankenstein VRM stack or Admiral’s 1-tag, 1-vendor, no-code VRM stack.

Thanks, Dan. If you are interested in learning more about Admiral Connect, read this

announcement

.