by Carl Magnuson
It's happening. And, it's happening in Decatur Illinois, Arbitron market #273. With a population in the TSA of about 150,000, Neuhoff Broadcasting is averaging about 75,000 page views and 25,000 unique visitors every month on its five stations. Neuhoff Vice President of Operations, Michael Hulvey (pictured) says to monetize those streams the company turned to Abacast and Matt Sunshine from the Center for Sales Strategy. And it's paid off big time.
RI: What was your streaming and online monetization situation before and after the strategy change you implemented?
Hulvey : Before we were just providing the most basic station streaming offering. From a revenue and priority perspective we weren't where we wanted to be. That changed earlier this year at the meeting of State Radio Networks. Matt Sunshine from the Center for Sales Strategy, Michael Dalfonzo of Abacast and I got involved in a conversation about the ?share of voice? concept. It made such good sense I took it back and shared it with our managers and they loved it. We set up a conference call with Matt, he laid out the strategy for our management team and the idea clicked right into place and all of a sudden we?re seeing black where before streaming was a big ugly red number.
RI: What is ?share of voice??
Hulvey : Simply put its taking your entire streaming inventory across all stations and dividing it up equally between partners. Whether its 20 or 25 or 30 partners, each gets an equal share of the total number of ad units available on the streams at a price that is palatable for them. They understand it, our people understand it and Abacast?s technology worked really well to make it easy for us to insert and manage these types of campaigns.
Within a couple weeks we got to a revenue positive situation where our streaming costs and projected Sound Exchange performance fees were met for the year. We?re now a good way beyond that and every new share of voice partner we sign adds a healthy piece of non-broadcast revenue to our bottom line.
RI: You are closing deals. What does that sales pitch sound like?
Hulvey : We?re offering your business the opportunity to have a conversation across 5 stations that when combined reach just about every flavor of consumer in our community. You?re also reaching people in new ways and in different places. People who are streaming at their desk at work or are at home in front of the computer where they can immediately go check out your website for the car that you just featured or they can Facebook their friends or coworkers to say I just heard an ad for a lunch special let?s go here... So it?s a great way to broaden your conversation with listeners and it?s so affordable honestly you?re going to have a hard time saying no. How many can I sign you up for today?
RI: You said affordable. Now I know we?re dealing with a smaller market and so the numbers won?t be huge. But I am curious what is the happy medium you found where it?s profitable enough for the station, it?s affordable for the advertiser yet it?s still worth the sales person?s effort to go out and close it?
Hulvey : Each deal ads about $3,600 to the bottom line that we didn?t have before. At the end of the year we?ll do $90,000 to $100,000 in new revenue. That might not be a big number in market 10 or market 50 but in Decatur a 100K revenue bump from local NTR is a big deal.
RI: There are industry people who say they can?t make money on streaming or they can?t make enough money to justify the effort or expense. There are a handful of broadcasters, you included, that have proven the opposite true. If you were speaking with another radio GM or owner who is skeptical, what would you say?
Hulvey : I would say, I can understand your position because I was there once myself and it was because we didn?t have a formula? Not one that worked. But with help from Matt Sunshine and Michael Dalfonzo we were able to create something that sales people got excited about selling and that advertisers understood and recognized the value in for their dollar. And the proof is in the pudding. We are successfully generating revenue today where we weren?t generating revenue before?I?m sold. We?re all from the state of Missouri. Show me, right?!
To reach Mike Hulvey and ask him questions about how he's generating $100K in revenue, e-mail Mike at MichaelHulvey@neuhoffmedia.com. For more information about the Streaming products offered by Abacast visit www.abacast.com. or e-mail Rob Green directly: robgreen@abacast.com. For more information from Matt Sunshine about the "voice of share" concept e-mail Matt Matt Sunshine mattsunshine@csscenter.com
Carl Magnuson is Co-Creator and Director of Sales, Social Radio LLC. He can be reached via e-mail at thevoiceofcarl@gmail.com
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