5-15-2013
Anyone who has ever attended one of my trainings knows I?m not a big fan of selling display ads. They deliver horrible results and advertisers don?t want to pay all that much for them.
However, they are a common digital advertising opportunity sold by most radio stations, so they have their place in the local advertising landscape.
To make them more worthwhile for the advertiser in terms of results and revenue for your station, they should absolutely never be sold on their own. I like to think of displays ad as ?digital promotion,? as part of a larger package to drive traffic to a contest, a registration page for an event, or a video directory.
To extract more value from your display ads you need to get more creative with your online inventory. Here are a few ideas on how to double, or even triple, the value and engagement of your display ads.
1. Homepage Takeovers
Selling display ads exclusively raises the value and engagement of display ads. If you haven?t done so already, start selling homepage takeovers. For most radio websites, the homepage is still the most viewed page on the website. Think about it, how many times a day does your station direct listeners to that one page?
A homepage takeover involves selling all your display ad positions on your homepage to one advertiser for one day. You can sell a premium CPM rate because of the exclusivity and high visibility of this opportunity. Consider trying to sell at least one homepage takeover a month and definitely sell homepage takeovers to promote retail sales over long holiday weekends.
2. Sponsor Your Traffic Spikes
Do you know when your website has the most traffic? You should. Generally speaking, the average website sees a spike in traffic between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time each day and the Web experiences the heaviest traffic Tuesday through Thursday.
Your station also probably sees huge spikes in traffic during weather events, big entertainment or sporting events, and important news stories.
Sponsor those spikes at premium rates by pre-selling those impressions. Create a display ad package sponsoring your storm coverage. Deploy a pre-sold advertiser?s display ad 48 hours before a storm and leave it up 24 hours after the storm, so they?ll be prominently featured during that huge spike in traffic to your website.
3. Turn Display Ads Into Video or Widgets
One of the fastest and easiest ways to double the engagement and value of your display ad positions is by turning them into video players, polls, or Twitter widgets.
You can team up with Jivox.com or mixpo.com to turn a standard medium rectangle display ad (300 x 250) into a video player with a call to action integrated into the end of the video.
If you have a client with an active Twitter feed, you can have them create a Twitter widget to fit one of your display ad positions. All they need to do is go to their Twitter settings to build a widget and then send you the code to add to your website.
Finally, you can create fun interactive polls and quizzes based on your advertiser?s marketing goals using tools from pollsnack.com.
Each of these opportunities turns your flat and boring display ads into something interactive and engaging, catching the eye of both your users and advertisers.
Stephen Warley is the founder of inboundarts.com, a research and training firm dedicated to helping radio broadcasters use digital tools to generate more qualified sales leads. He is also the founded of LocalBroadcastSales.com in 2008. Email him at stephen@inboundarts.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
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