Besides the /advertise/ page on your website, your media kit is often the sales brochure for your website to woo potential advertisers. That’s why it’s important to browse some high quality media kit templates before you commit to designing your first media kit.

Choose a media kit template which puts your best foot forward. It is the first impression of your brand to potential advertisers.

Your media kit template should also include all the information a potential advertiser needs to decide whether to advertise on your website. It should be a comprehensive, enticing, and well-thought-out document. 

As you may have seen in our popular How to Sell Advertising on Your Website article, your media kit is an essential tool for all digital sales teams (or individuals!).

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the main sections seen in our media kit template. If you haven’t downloaded our media kit template yet, you’ll find the link further below!

What Should Be in a Media Kit?

Firstly it needs to be noted that there are a number of different types of media kit templates, depending on their purpose. Some media kits are about companies and used to attract investors or used for public relations purposes. Other media kit templates are specifically made for influencers who rely on brands sponsoring them, or buying sponsored posts, on their social media profiles.

This article is about media kits designed for the purpose of selling advertising, sponsored content, or collaborations on a website.

The best audience for this particle guide is website owners and bloggers, who have reached a stage to move away from tools like Adsense, Mediavine, or Ezoic and are looking to form direct relationships with brands.

All digital sales media kits typically have the same sections, since most advertisers will make their decisions based on the same information. From an advertisers point of view, they want to know what the website is about, what the readers are interested in, the quantity and demographics of the readers, and how they can get involved on the website.

Your job as the marketing manager for the website is to answer these questions, while pitching your website as the perfect fit for the advertisers marketing budget.

These are the typical sections you’ll find in a media kit…

Cover Page

100% of media kits I design have a full-page cover. It doesn’t need to be complex: an image, your logo, and a one or two-line blurb about your website will do the trick. I update my media kit annually, or bi-annually, I’ll also date the media kit along the lines of “Summer 2020” or “2020 Edition”.

Personal media kits can (obviously) be a little less dull than big faceless media organisation media kits. Below is a nice example from Natalie Borton’s blog. It simple features her logo, a personal image, and the date of the media kit.

Websites without a face can simply use a lifestyle image related to their niche. Below is a slightly outdated media kit that still looks clean and tidy, which introduces the brand well. The blurb does a good job of capturing the websites purpose in just two short lines.

About the website

I like to make this section cover a full page. It is normally the first page in my media kit too, after a title page.

In this section you can talk about:

• Why your website exists (whats your purpose)
• What is your website (explain it to a first-time visitor)
• What a visitor can expect (what content do you produce?)
• Who your website appeals too (high level demographics)

About the Owner (if a 1 person team)

In some cases a media kit should talk about the owner(s) of the website. This is more common in niches like travel blogs, cooking/baking blogs, and fitness websites. In general, websites where the owner is very public.

Potential advertisers need a good understanding that the website (and people) that they are collaborating with are a good fit for their brand.

If your website is “faceless”, then you can skip the “About me” section of your media kit.

Janice Smith from Salads for Lunch combines both the about sections in one concise (half page summary). If you don’t want to ramble on for too long about yourself or your blog, this is a great way to get this section over and done nicely and quickly.

Note: We’ve included an About Me section in our media kit templates which you can download below, but feel free to remove it.

Site Traffic

The data for the Site Traffic section can (in most cases) simply be pulled from Google Analytics by navigating to the Audience > Overview section.

You’ll want to include:

• Monthly Users (helps to show advertisers the reach of your website)
• Monthly Page views (shows how many banner impressions may be available)

Below is a reasonably straightforward site traffic section (seen on the right) for a New Zealand based website.

If you want to simplify things a little, then you can use white space to make the data appear less complex. Below is the site traffic section from the High Snobiety 2018 media kit. The simplicity and design of their media kit reflects their brand well – a lifestyle and arts magazine.

Newsletter Details

Your newsletter is a huge asset when selling ads directly, so be sure to give it a specific mention if you have a sizeable list (I’d personally hesitate to mention it if you have under 1,000 subscribers. Once it gets to 10,000+ it becomes a powerful tool to seal deals with brands).

Sample

Sent weekly to 35,000 subscribers with a consistent open rate of around 30%, we combine event info, news, photos, videos, competitions and advertising to create the ULTIMATE newsletter.

Demographic Details

Brands typically know exactly who their audience is. Let’s take food boxes as an example – it’s not enough to pitch them that your website is about healthy eating.

• You need to show that your audience is mainly in the same country the brand services
• You need to prove that your audience is likely in their desired age brackets. Not many 13 to 17 year old teenagers are making dinner decisions for their household, but many 30 – 50 year parents are.
• Some brands survey their visitors to get a better idea of their household income. If you have done this, it can be good to prove that your visitors have disposable income. Very few brands want to advertise to households that make under $20,000 per year, but many want to advertise to households that make $100,000+ per year. In the food box example, they know that families in lower income brackets are less likely to spend $100+ a week to have food packaged and delivered to them for convenience.

The below example (used earlier) shows all demographic data an advertiser might want to know in one small section.

If this is too formal for your website, you can tone it back a little. Below is a blogs media kit from the United States, and it ticks all the basic demographic information required for less fussy media buyers.

If you’re looking for something to copy/paste into your media kit template, below is the demographic section from our first example above. Get amongst it, but don’t forget to change the numbers!

Gender:
51% Male ( 10 % higher than market aggregate)
49% Female

Age:
7.7% Under 20
25.7% Aged 20 – 29
22.9% Aged 30 – 39
24.3% Aged 40 – 49
18.5% Aged 50 +

Geo:
Our is legendary worldwide and so is our website – Nielsen records that 20% of our traffic was international eyeballs, specifically 12% were Australian. Act quickly to capitalize on reaching this lucrative audience with geo-targeted advertising.

Social Profiles

List your social profiles, and the number of followers on each. If you have regular events on your social channels which potential partners could be interested in participating in, be sure to include mention of these (eg Giveaway Fridays / Shot of the Day).

This section doesn’t need to be complex. Here is a simple example used by a large brand…

Services Offered

Here is where you can give a two or three sentance overview off all the different ways a brand can collaborate with your website…

Sponsored Articles: You supply the content, we supply the audience. Your article will be seen by thousands of our readers monthly.

Sponsored Links: Just looking for a quick boost to your traffic? Our sponsored links in existing content can help.

Social Collaborations: We have over 5,000 followers across all main social channels. Get in touch to reach our social following.

Display banners: Our website delivers over 100,000 ad impressions monthly, and we are ready to craft a campaign for your brand to reach our engaged audience.

Sponsored sections: Bring your brand to the front of our visitors minds with high-impact section sponsorships or existing or newly created sections.

Weekly Newsletters: Our weekly newsletter is delivered to 3,500 inboxes. With a 45% open rate, and 30% CTR, our database is ready to learn about your brand.

If any one monetization method is exceptionally popular for advertisers on your website, don’t hesitate to add an entire section on just that one service. Below is an example of a website which monetizes their website heavily with sponsored content. They’ve decided to include their writer’s guidelines within their media kit.

Past Collaborations

This section doesn’t need to be more complex than a handful of logos showcasing which brands you have worked with previously.

Ad Positions

We’ve included listing Ad Positions in our media kit template, but it can often be left off and included in the rate card. You can choose to include benchmark CPM rates, or you could leave them off and wait for the advertiser to ask for your ratecard, or a specific package.

Big Banners
Highly visible and above the fold – 760 x 120 display ads appear across all 1000 web pages and are available to purchase by week on specific page. Target the homepage, all webcams, forecasts or just appear on specific ski areas or across a variety of pages as a ‘share-of-voice’; the choice is yours. Costs per thousand ad views are $40; negotiable depending on the frequency and duration of your campaign.

Super Skyscrapers
The is a 300 x 600 advert appearing on the far right hand side of all our pages, these extra large ad spaces are sought after highly. Costs per thousand ad views are just $30 and the placement is similar in size to a full page magazine ad.

Islands/Rectangle
Island ads appear across all our ‘webcam’ pages and the homepage only. This ‘below-the-fold’ ad placement is priced at $20 per thousand ad views.

Get in Touch

All good sales material needs a call to action, and media kits are no exception. You’ll see in our media kit template we’ve kept our call to action simple. This is what I’ve used in the many media kits I’ve distributed over the years and it seems to work well.
Sample

Do you have a collaboration in mind? Let’s chat! Contact me to brainstorm ideas or discuss opportunities. 0800 000 000 / hello@yourwebsite.com / yourwebsite.com

Below is an example the final page of a media kit which doesn’t include a explicit call-to-action, but does clearly show all the websites contact details.

The Natalie Borton media kit mentioned earlier takes their contact section a bit further, and shares a small blurb about how excited she is to collaborate with the readers brand. It also sneaks in a little social proof / scarcity through the line “all sponsorships and collaborations are on a first come, first serve basis”. Nice!

Where to find Media Kit Templates

Firstly, we have a free media kit template you can download.

Online Tools

Canva: As of today, Canva has about 39 media kit templates you can use. Canva can be a quick way to get a media kit sorted, but it lacks flexibility. If you are slightly creative, and know your way around Word or InDesign, we recommend making a media kit yourself. But if you already have a Canva account, go and check out if any of the templates suit your brand before going any further!

Unsplash: I tend to use lots of imagery in my media kit templates. Half page, and even full page, photographs can help break up a lot of boring content. They can also help to set the vibe of your website in the advertisers mind. Unsplash (or Pexels) provide free high quality images which you can download and include in your media kit.

I often printed my media kits onto high quality paper and would leave these at media agencies when I was pitching to them in-person. If you plan to do this, make sure you use low quality photographs as they’ll become pixelated which reflects poorly on your brand. 

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Common Questions about Media Kits

What are media kits?

Yikes! Hopefully, you’ll know what a media kit is if you have made it this far through the article. Simply put, a media kit is a pre-packaged set of materials a website owner can use to concisely explain all advertising opportunities on your website, along with audience demographics and relevant website statistics.

How are media kits most often used?

Media kits are first and foremost available through a websites /advertise/ page. They are typically downloadable as a PDF, and either available for immediate download, or upon request via an email. They are most commonly used by advertisers to decide where to spend their digital media budget

How much do media kits cost?

Most bloggers make their own media kit, so the cost is minimal. They can even be free to make with free stock photography (or your own images), and knowledge of a tool such as InDesign, Photoshop, of Microsoft Word. You can also use Google Docs for free, although I personally find I can achieve better designs in other tools. If you have a website which has good potential with advertisers, you might want to spend up to $500 having a professional designer create your media kit, or download a basic media kit template from a site such as GraphicRiver for $10 to $20 dollars.

What do media kits include?

Media kits can include as little or as much information as you feel is required to convince a brand to advertise on your website. They can be 2 pages, or up to 10 pages. At a bare minimum media kits can include the following sections: about the website, user demographics, website data, advertising opportunities, and your contact information.

Where can I find media kit examples?

This cheeky Google Search (“filetype:pdf “mediakit” site:.com blog”) will provide you with a few pages of media kit examples from real websites that you can view online. What the search does is look for PDF documents, that contain the word media kit on websites that end in .com. I’ve included the word “blog” on the end to make this search for suitable for finding media kit examples for bloggers, but you can remove or change this particular word to make it more suitable for your website.

Final Words

Spend a few hours finding, or creating, the best media kit template you can. Your websites media kit will represent your website for a number of years.