How Laughing Squid Unlocked New Revenue With the beehiiv Ad Network

Situation:

Laughing Squid has been publishing content about art, culture, and technology since 2003. Over two decades, founder Scott Beale built a widely read blog and a daily newsletter that surfaces the site’s latest posts.

For years, the newsletter ran on tools like Mailchimp and later MailerLite. While it served distribution well, it was not meaningfully contributing to revenue in the same way the blog did through display ads.

Beale wanted to increase the return on content he was already publishing without turning newsletter monetization into a separate business to manage.

Challenge:

The challenge was not audience size or content quality. It was leverage.

• The newsletter required manual effort but produced limited incremental revenue
• Traditional newsletter advertising required sales outreach and ad ops
• Beale did not want to compromise the reader experience or publishing cadence
• Managing advertisers internally would pull time away from content

He needed a way to monetize the newsletter that was simple, flexible, and low-effort.

Solution:

In March 2024, Beale migrated Laughing Squid’s newsletter to beehiiv and immediately enabled the beehiiv Ad Network.

The Ad Network allowed Laughing Squid to:

• Receive inbound advertising opportunities from vetted brands
• Insert ads with just a few clicks directly inside the newsletter
• Choose from multiple creative options per advertiser
• Schedule placements around existing publishing workflows
• Let beehiiv handle advertiser relationships, logistics, and payouts

This made newsletter advertising a complement to blog ads rather than a separate system to manage.

Results:

After switching to beehiiv:

• Laughing Squid began generating supplemental newsletter revenue immediately
• Ads ran alongside existing blog monetization without conflict
• The team spent no additional time on ad sales or operations
• Newsletter advertising became a repeatable revenue stream rather than a one-off test

Beale highlighted the flexibility of choosing when ads run and selecting creative that best fits the newsletter tone, while beehiiv handled everything else.

Why It Matters

Laughing Squid shows how established publishers can unlock new revenue from existing audiences without rebuilding their workflow.

The beehiiv Ad Network turns newsletters into monetizable assets without requiring sales teams, negotiations, or custom tooling. For content-first publishers, that means higher returns with minimal effort.

If you already publish consistently, the infrastructure to earn more is often the missing piece.

Start using beehiiv to turn your newsletter into a reliable revenue channel, not just a distribution tool.