Hi Everyone,
As radio stations move more and more to integrating their websites in their own marketing plans, I'm wondering how many of you are actually charging for web placements on your websites? If you are, would you mind sharing the pricing strategy you use? Many stations provide it as a value-added benefit to annual contracts. But in order to generate revenue from the web, I'm wondering how cheaply you price the ads. Also, do you price per 1000 (?) impressions? Click throughs? And do you price the same for a rotating ad as you would for a stationary ad?
Sorry, that's a lot of questions!
Thank you in advance for any ideas you are willing to share.
Hi Sean,
Thanks so much for replying! Do you charge $100 per month or year? And is that just on your main page?
Thanks again!
Stacey,
I assume you are working for WGFA or its descendant. I am a previous owner of WPXN. I am now in wonderful Wyoming and loving it. I have enclosed our web banner flyer in pdf. Hope it is helpful. Our website is www.rivertonradio.com It has won WBA awards for best small market website 4 years running.
Dave Blumer
KTAK/KVOW
Riverton, Wy
Hi Dave!
How wonderful to hear from you! Yes, I work for WGFA. This is our 50th Annivesary year and we are still owned and operated by Dick and Maggie Martin - Dick (my father) started the station in 1961. I will definitely tell them I ran into you here! Paxton Buckley Loda has a hell of a basketball team this year - I think they're ranked 5th in the state!
Thank you so very much for the PDF file - that will help immensely! I will check out your website too:) We just redesigned ours recently. It's www.wgfaradio.com.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Stacey
Stacey, thank you for your questions. Yes, we have been monetizing our website for a couple years now. We charge on a monthly, or when appropriate, even shorter timeframe, (example: impressions threshold). We base our rates on a CPM, (cost per thousand) as determined by the major newspaper in our area. One of the elements that establishes value for our web advertising (which goes deeper than mere static banner ads) is a Campaign Analysis at conclusion of each month providing digital metrics: total impressions, clicks, and CTR% (click thru average percentage) as calculated on your local paper CTR%. We have not moved to a cost per click, or cost per action, and that is not in our plans. A recent Harris Interactive study detemined un-aided recall of a brand was enhanced by 20% when Radio and digital functioned together-suggests the marriage is worth the money. It hurts our Radio industry for reps to offer digital assets as value-added to a Radio campaign. Legitimize the combo by selling the two in tandem with every schedule, and providing end of campaign metrics. Think about it, now your Radio campaign has a plaltform by which it can promote all that detail - hours of business, cards accepted, map to locations, phone number, etc. Your Radio campaign moved the emotions, now your adjacent digital campaign fleshes out the details. "For more information see their ad at (fill in the blank radio website dot com)". Happy selling to you.
Roger
Roger,
Congratulations. It appears that your website has crossed the threshold from being an expense to an investment. Some of my friends in the business have said they know of no one who's making any (serious) money from their websites. I'm familiar with a few whose websites are bringing in $4-5K/month in additional business (i.e., not cannibalizing their radio income), making them profitable at least.
Are you at liberty to share information on the dollars you're bringing in from your website advertising? Whether expressed in terms of actual monthly billing or as a percentage of your monthly radio advertising billing, I'd love to know more about your web-success.
Holland Cooke recently shared his view that Radio + Internet is the most powerful advertising combo out there these days, and what you've described certainly seems to be consistent with his view.
Thanks!
-Rod
Stacey,
Just clicked on the link and poked around your website. Nicely done! Clean, organized, inviting—congratulations! Hope you're able to parlay all your work into a worthy revenue stream.
Jerry Papenfuss, a well-respected broadcaster in Minnesota (for whom I had the privilege of working from 1974-79), has also created a substantial online companion for his five stations in Winona (http://www.winonaradio.com) It's one of the most attractive and engaging radio sites I've seen. See if you don't agree. Although I'm sure Jerry would tell us they're "not selling enough," it would appear that they've found a way to extend the value of the radio stations to their advertisers via the website.
By way of contrast, I wish I could say that we're making the most of the opportunity offered by our two local websites, both the radio station site and its longer-tenured cousin, PalouseAds.com. Regarding the latter, our stations partnered with our local ISP five or six years ago to host and market this site as a service to our listeners and others in the community. It quickly gained traction—and I mean became a juggernaut! in terms of the number of people using it regularly—thanks to consistent advertising on two radio stations, and the result is a medium that attracts and holds substantial traffic each week. (Click on some of the more popular Classified categories and you'll see what I mean.) Drove the newspaper and shopper crazy and cost them a bundle in classified ad revenue because we were giving it away. Unfortunately, after all these years we have yet to take a serious stab at monetizing it. Everyone's time and effort is poured into the radio side of things and nobody seems to have the time or inclination to make a full-court-press effort to leverage all this traffic. If anyone has some suggestions that might help us break the logjam, I'd love to hear them.
Anyhow, thanks for the post, Stacey!
-RodP.S. Say Hi to Maggie for me. It's been a long time, but I always enjoyed visiting with her.
Hi Rod!
Thank you so much for the information! And likewise for your kind words about our website! I look forward to looking at your site later today:)
Take care,
Stacey
Rod, last year I averaged just under $4,500 per month in digital billing. This included two online auctions, online coupon campaigns, mobile, static banner, rich media, and eBlasts.
Roger
I’m sorry to be late to the party, but as someone who develops websites for radio stations and advises them on advertising strategies, perhaps I can offer some insights.
First, there seems to be a general agreement that giving away web space is a bad idea, because it establishes zero value for that space. Yes, there are times when we use our website for value-added, but we should always put up a little bit of a fight.
I wish there were a general formula for pricing that worked across the board, but the perceived value of your online inventory is based on what others in the market have been charging and what the merchant is accustomed to. If you are just introducing banner advertising on your site to the market, you need to be sensitive to what others are getting for their banner advertising and pricing yours accordingly. You might have an introductory price that is on par with what others in the market are charging, and once you have the attention of the advertising community, you can present radio’s superiority and move the price upward.
What is that superiority? Quite simply, radio has proved to be only medium that can consistently, efficiently, and powerfully drive traffic to a website. (Naturally, you need to promote your website super-heavily on your radio stations through promos, liners, personality mentions—and especially a line in your information casts that goes something like, “For details on these and other stories, visit yourwebsite.com, where we’re always on.”)
I would stay away from pricing per thousand; in a small market, such a measurement has little relevance, especially since it relies on accurate traffic statistics. And since Internet advertising is a relatively new concept, we don’t know whether our statistics sound good or bad to the advertiser. (There continues to be a widespread misunderstanding of the terms “hits” and “page views,” and even when you use the correct term in the correct context, the merchant may not understand it the same way.)
You should also have a simple, clear sales strategy for online advertising. You should have no more than two or three ad sizes and then two or three options for using them. For example:
Sizes:
• Leaderboard (728 x 90 pixels)
• Square Button (125 x 125 pixels)
• Button 1 (120 x 90 pixels)
Options:
• ROS, all pages
• ROS, every third [or whatever] page
• Page sponsorship
Note that all the sizes conform to IAB standards. This is important so that when you receive orders from regional and national advertisers and agencies, you are speaking the same language.
Your pricing, then, is based on the size of the banner and how it is used. Think of the air time on your radio station: a 60 is worth marginally more than a 30, and the total cost depends on how many ads you run. Similarly, a leaderboard is worth more because it is larger and attracts more attention, but it is still one impression, so it cannot be that much more.
The “ROS, all pages” option is the most valuable, because no matter what pages the visitor visits, the advertiser is there. The “ROS, every third [or whatever] page” option is the next in value, because the advertiser will appear on multiple pages on the site, ensuring that most visitors will see the ad. The page sponsorship is actually the least valuable, because it will only display the ad to people who go to that page specifically. But its value is enhanced because it delivers efficiently the kind of people the advertiser wants to reach.
As I said, it is difficult to establish a universal value for these ads, because it depends on local market factors. But let’s just say that your most valuable ad—a leaderboard running on every page—is $100. A leaderboard running on every third page would be worth, say, $80. A square button running on every page might be worth $80, while a square button running on every third page might be worth $60. This enables you to construct a pricing matrix not unlike a radio rate card.
When you sell your ads, it’s a good idea to down play click-throughs. Throughout the Internet, click-throughs are an abysmally low percentage—on the order of a fraction of a percent. The client’s radio ads will help boost that a little bit, but about the most you can ever expect is maybe 5%, tops.
It’s better to think of an online ad like a billboard. You have a few seconds to deliver a message, and that message should support and reinforce what the client is doing in other media.
Online advertising is a brave new world, but it’s important that we establish leadership in our markets as quickly and decisively as possible.
I agree w/ a lot of what Roger and Jay said. Standard IAB ad sizes are critical to show major buyers you're a serious player.
We re-launched our website www.hometowndailynews.com May 3, 2010. Through the end of Feb, 2011, we have over 3,000,000 million pageviews.
We are not giving our website away. We looked at the market, particularly TV, to determine what our competition was charging. Most sell on cost per thousand so we establised a base price from that. Then, depending on page popularity and ad size, we established a per week price that was a little less than our competition. Prices range from $225 a wk to $25 a wk. The highest priced ads are the most popular and most are on extended schedules.
You would be amazed at the amount of money people are spending on internet advertising compared to what we're all getting for radio.
We're also getting sizeable revenue from on-line auctions and direct coupon sales.
We sell ads on our online broadcast by impressions. 10,000 impressions cost "x" dollars. You can achieve that number within just a few days, or spread the frequency out over multiple weeks. While your ad is playing you have a banner ad that offers a click through to the customer website. A customer can also choose to buy 20, 30, or 40 thousand impressions.
Tile ads and banner ads are sold either locked to our Home Page for a premium or as rotators on all inside pages. We encourage participation with our customers using the premise of building on the relationship they have already established through on air. No delivery is guaranteed at this point in time. These pieces of "real estate" are priced at a level so that we continue to see demand and generate revenue levels that give our business office the returns they like to see.
