Ad Sales Blog

The thing about overlap...McDonalds takes its shot at Starbucks

When you sell media there is always overlap. Your magazine readers read other magazines, your website visitors visit other websites, etc.

But overlap can also be used to strategic advantage if you come up with a plan to pull traffic away from competitors. That is what McDonalds did to Starbucks in May of this year with a special promotion designed pull overlap business their way.

According to Experian Simmons who tracked the results of the program, "For some time, the percentage of McDonald’s customers who also visited Starbucks trended steadily at around 17 percent. This trend quickly changed upon the launch of the McDonald’s McCafe coffee line in May of 2009. In one week, the percentage of McDonald’s customers also visiting Starbucks dropped below 15 percent and remained below 15 percent for about 9 weeks."

Think about your competitors that overlap and consider what content you could deploy that could bring them over to your side.  

"Online media is bought on religion or politics"

Susan Bratton’s “DishyMix” podcast came up with up one of the funniest and succinct descriptions of how media gets bought during her interview with media metrics guru, Jim Sterne (photo at left). Sterne is the founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits where online wizards gather to interpret data from online programs and ad campaigns.

In the world on online ad metrics you would think that the numbers would speak for themselves and there be little room for the human element. Wrong. When Sterne talks about how media decisions get made, metrics and all, the human element is still very much present.  

According to Sterne media is bought on either "religion or politics." According to Sterne, “If it’s religion, your CMO 15 years ago was good at buying television. So television gets all the money ‘cause that’s what he knows. Or, she really was a brilliant “search” marketing person, so search gets the focus. She’s the hammer and everything looks like a nail.”

“Politics is where the corporate search guy is going to get more money because he has known the CMO longer or has more power.”

Sterne summarizes, "You know it’s religion if they say, 'You know I’ve always done it this way and it’s worked for me.' It's politics when they say, 'Gees, we don’t have enough resources and this seems like the best way to go."

Click to listen to or download the DishyMix podcast featuring Jim Sterne here

A boost to sell your online news products

If you are selling any kind of newsletters, if your website has a basic news design, or if you are sponsoring any webcasts that have a news or current affairs focus, here is a great factoid to share with your advertisers to reinforce the value of what you sell.  

In just the past few months the number of Americans who pick the Internet as their top choice for National and International news had almost doubled, enabling the Internet to surpass Newspapers as the second most preferred news media. With young people Internet sources are almost tied with the top choice, television.

Although Pew does not mention this, it would be hard to imagine that the recent National elections may have helped focus people on where they really prefer to get news.

From the study:

Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the Internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the Internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

For young people, however, the Internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news on line; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the Internet (68% vs. 34%).

On a call.

Share this as passing a benchmark, which it is. "Hey did you hear that the number of people who use the Internet as their top source for news almost doubled in the past five months? Internet news sources, for the first time ever, passed newspapers and are only behind television. Glad you are running ads in our online news product? See? You are keeping up with the times!"

 Download the report to take on a call:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1066/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source

 

"Pure plays" beat you by loving search more

Many print publishers I talk to are surprised by upstart "web only" media companies that drain online ad dollars out of their markets. Established media should hold all the cards; an established brand, a history in the market, and access to online list development via the magazine subscription process.

How do these web only "pure plays" stand a chance? Simple, they love search more than we do. A study from Borrell Associates entitled, "WHAT LOCAL MEDIA WEB SITES EARN: May 2008 SURVEY", uncovers the strategy in the regional magazine market that should raise alarm for any magazine, anywhere.

First, some news from the survey that challenges the conventional wisdom that your print brand gives a huge advantage online: 

 "The most financially successful local Web operations are venturing into page designs and product lines that have little to do with the medium that gave birth to them. Like their “new media” predecessors in radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s, they are creating unique identities and breaking away from their print and broadcast roots."

 On how pure plays get their traffic:

 "Part of the growth is being driven by traditional local media companies selling advertising on their own sites. Most of it, however, comes from pure-play companies delivering lower cost advertising that intercepts consumers not as they are reading news online, but as they are using the Web to research products and prices."

 "Intercept" web visitors as they "research products and prices"? That's "search." Without a print brand to drive visits to a site "search" is how they do it. Simply put, "pure plays" are playing the Search Engine Optimization game better, and are able to establish competitive brands as result. 

Download a free summary of the Borrell report

  

 

 

You've been "optimized" off the schedule

Has this happened to you?

A digital ad agency representing a Fortune 500 corporation sends you an RFP for a two week online campaign. You respond professionally and promptly. Like a shock, word comes back, they are in! The news travels through your organization like wild fire, "We just broke into a Fortune 500 Corporation's digital ad budget!" As dozens of congratulatory e-mails surge through your company the future looks bright. The media runs. The media stops running. There is no follow up RFP. You can't get the media buyer on the phone and she does not respond to your emails. When you finally hear back, the response is one sentence apologizing for the delay in getting back and a mention that your media will not be considered for the future of the campaign. Ouch! What happened?

Here is how someone at the digital agency described the same process:
"We had a three month campaign to buy media for. In the first two weeks we ran three different versions of the creative in several size configurations. We ran ads in a wide range of websites to test the response.

We ran the two week test, then optimized the buy.

Of the three creative treatments, the one offering a free download performed best. Of the three ad sizes the leader board size performed best. We tried 30 different websites and found that eleven performed best so we continued with them and dropped the rest."

On your next call.

Don’t be discouraged by this process. On the surface it may look like media evaluation is out of your control. Not true. While results rule the day, PEOPLE still evaluate the results. Your job is to help your buyer understand why a response from your unique visitor is more valuable, or at least different, from any other. When your respond to an online RFP make sure the buyer understands what kind of response they can expect from your media AND why that response is important for the campaign. Do this at the time of the sale, not later. Selling media is still selling. To be successful, you need to sell the unique value of your visitor and his or her response BEFORE it runs.

Why does your site exist?

Why does your site exist?

On a sales call, how do you answer this question? Many media reps jump into a canned pitch about the power of their print originated brand franchise and how their website extends the franchise online.

Baloney.

Media buyers, are driven by "What's in if it for me," and the best print brand does not guarantee online results.

The online word is results and measurement driven. You have to explain the functional benefit behind your online media first. Then go one to explain how this function can generate measurable results. Start with an explanation of what your website or online media DOES for it's visitors.

A great post on today's "Online Metrics Insider" lays out a guide for categorizing the functional benefit of a website for people who measure web performance. They need this as much as we do. If you can't functionally define a web visitor benefit you cannot evaluate a web sites result, nor can you explain the advertising benefit of that site to a media buyer.

From the post:

Your Web site exists for a purpose, perhaps multiple purposes, such as:

Providing information or data. Many sites entice people to visit for access to valuable, differentiated information or data. Traffic is then monetized primarily through site advertising. Many internal and external analytics packages will tell you where visitors come from and what they do on site, which, when combined with demographic information, can be used to qualify a specific audience to an advertiser.

Generating leads. A content asset is placed on a site and gated using a form. People fill out the form and download the asset. The information captured in the form is stored and used by the company that generated the leads or profitably sold to another company.

Selling products. The typical e-commerce model involves acquiring customers via some method or offer, providing a product catalog or landing page, and creating a strong call to action and funnel that persuades people to purchase a product.

Connecting people. The explosion of social networking sites where people connect to other people, interact with each other, and use widgets, apps, and data services, is a modern phenomenon in which many of us participate.

Read the entire post on the Media Post's "Online Metic Insider"

Alexa, the great attention getter!

Amazon.com owned Alexa, who claims to have had over 10 million downloads of its search tool bar since 1997, is here to help you get the attention of your client who is ignoring you. To do this you will use their site in a way it was not originally intended.

Alexa provides a nifty chart making interface that allows you to type in the names of up to five web sites, hit the "compare sites" button and zingo! a comparative web traffic chart appears. Cool!

Alexa's traffic rankings are not based on actual site usage reports but on the usage patterns of Alexa Tool bar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views. As with any system like this the larger the traffic on the sites you are tracking, the more accurate. For small sites with light traffic accuracy can be questionable. 

On a call:

This traffic measurement tool is a good way to compare your sites traffic with competitive sites. But there is a better way to use it.

Many of your clients care more about their competition than their customers, and all of your clients want to hear more about their competition than what you are trying to sell them. So use Alexa to compare your customers site traffic to those of it's competitors.

The chart above, compares site traffic of Best Buy, Circuit City, and Shoplocal. Don't ya think the media the buyer at Circuit City would find this interesting? Hey look at that big post Thanksgiving traffic spike. How come the Thanksgiving spike did not carry Shoplocal.com as far? This will be a great conversation starter. Then comes the logical question to ask the Circuit City media buyer..."Do need more expose through your offerings to compete with Best Buy?"

Go to Alexa.com and type in the name of the client you want to call on and their competitors. Now you can start a dialog with some information they will want to see!

go to the Alexa website