20 Comments Add your own

• 1. Rob  |  September 19th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

  My guess is that unless you’re geo-targeting and tracking uniques by zip code to judge how popular your site is to and using that data as a pricing point, it doesn’t matter where your unique traffic is coming from. It’s traffic, regardless of where it’s coming from, and you can leverage that to get more cash from advertisers.

• 2. Anonymous  |  September 19th, 2007 at 12:25 pm

  Impressions are impressions as long as the sales department isn’t misleading customers. Simply say that you had 10 million page views last month and leaving out that 80-90% of those were out of your DMA is a bit unethical if you ask me.

  On the up side, I would imagine that the wide exposure is more helpful to those stations that are not #1,2 or 3 in their respective markets. Sometimes stations that have poor TV viewership have poor online readership due to the fact that no one watches that station’s news. Having a distribution channel that is not locked to on-air teases can only help get some notice for bottom-ranked news sites.

• 3. Rex  |  September 19th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

  One of the reasons that IB is network is that it can get national advertising. So, to some degree, impressions are impressions.

• 4. Rocker  |  September 19th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

  Agree that both local and outside-market impressions have value to advertisers. I am concerned about stations that spend too much time worrying about attracting out-of-market traffic, because on a fundamental level those visits are less valuable. This is because ultimately you are trying to reinforce your local franchise, and build connections with your local audience. That is your business. Time and effort ..and sometimes even $…spent in attracting out-of-market traffic does nothing on this front. Not saying don’t do it…but am suggesting not losing sight of the real target.

• 5. wren  |  September 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm

  OK OK but look at the crap CNN is running….Here are a few headlines from IBC/CNN.com just today

  WBAL: Mad mom throws baby at cop
  KCTV: Puppy rescued from drainage pipe
  WTOV: Blind man dies after pals let him drive
  WPTZ: 60-year-olds go on alleged crime spree
  KPHO: Mom grieves; son\’s urn stolen again

  This isn\’t news. It\’s worthless dreck.

• 6. Mr. Semantics  |  September 19th, 2007 at 2:04 pm

  Yeah…you’re right, Rocker. Dreck. Why isn’t IB giving them geopolitical analyses of the Iraqi insurgency? It’s not like CNN has time for that with all this OJ/Britney news busting out.

• 7. Anonymous  |  September 19th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

  That dreck is purely driven by CNN and not the partner IB sites. From what I understand, the local stations have no control over what CNN chooses to promote. So far it seems to have been mostly “Freak of the Week” stories.

• 8. tdc  |  September 19th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

  i think they’re off to a good start, but there’s serious work to do.

  for one, they don’t have any of the top markets covered as nbc o&o’s must have an exclusive with ib and got ‘em by the shorties by not being part of the cnn deal; new york, los angeles, san francisco, philadelphia, washington dc… just to name a few.

  i hate to use rex’s name without an ok, but both he and i pointed this out when they first announced this deal.

  and you’ll really reinforce your ‘local franchise’ by working to be the go-to place for news, weather and sports… even if it means sending your users to web channels out of market to get them the best info. afterall, you are not nbc.

• 9. Ed  |  September 19th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

  Why, when unshackled from the terrestrial limits imposed on them by James Maxwell and the FCC, should a “local” tv station remain local?

  Or, alternately..

  When your new transmitter has global range, do you remain a “local” company?

• 10. Safran  |  September 19th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

  The strength of the locals is in localism. The only way they prosper is through local advertising successes. Rex’s point is good - having a piece of the national pie is great. But local TV stations are getting 1% of the local advertising share right now. That’s ridiculous. And local advertisers aren’t about to change that because a site is getting a ton of national traffic.

  As a local advertiser, how does a national traffic spike help me? As a local TV station, how can I build up that 1% share of local advertising by getting the occasional national traffic spike?

  There’s value to the deal - but by no means are all pageviews created equal.

• 11. tdc  |  September 19th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

  i can’t be the only one that doesn’t believe in ‘national traffic’ can i?

  all those purported ‘national’ users are ‘local’ to somewhere. getting a read on their ip address and sending them ads local to them regardless of the locality of the content is where the potential is.

  this deal has such great potential. i was watching thebostonchannel earlier today and got served a banner for a michigan company (just wait till the video ads go geo-t).

  this ain’t sliced bread, but then the surface has only been scratched.

  what about overlaying overseas content?

• 12. Cory  |  September 19th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

  Here’s my point, and I’m making up these numbers. Let’s say three months ago (before the CNN-IB deal), you’re charging local clients a $6 CPM to advertise in your news section. At that time, 90% of traffic to that section is local. Now with CNN referring tens of thousands of uniques or more, let’s say 65% of your news traffic is local and 35% is national. For a local advertiser, the value of that ad unit just dropped 38% and should be priced at $3.6 CPM.

  You can bet that’s not happening.

• 13. Rex  |  September 19th, 2007 at 6:45 pm

  Also, has anyone looked at the inventory on those stories? I’m seeing lots of national advertising clients.

  News pageviews have always been the lowest CPMs — local or national. It’s the vertical areas that carry nice premiums. So this deal basically gives IB a way to actually use some of that news inventory in a decent way.

  Is it the be-all, end-all? Is it defying your local sales strategy? Of course not. There’s no reason to get hyperbolic in either/or thinking.

• 14. Gorman  |  September 20th, 2007 at 7:00 am

  I actually dreaded national traffic spikes from Google News/Drudge/Fark.

  They obviously never sustained, and you’re left with unfavorable traffic numbers comparing future months to the spiked month. To some of our client’s credit, they understood what this meant, but overall, having the big sexy numbers were more harm than help.

• 15. Shelly  |  September 20th, 2007 at 7:04 am

  It’s been my experience while working with 30+ local sites that the sites don’t invoice advertisers by the cpm. My experience is that most local advertisers are charged a flat rate for a campaign flight. National traffic wouldn’t de-value the local impressions if that is the case.

• 16. Rick  |  September 20th, 2007 at 8:09 am

  In a lot of ways, a local TV site isn’t any different than a vertical niche site like ours.

  In theory, the most valued advertisers (and the ones that would get the most bang for the buck) would be advertisers that have a direct, specific connection with the site. For local sites, it’s local advertisers, for a vertical site, it’s advertisers in our space.

  But it’s important to have both as many page views as possible, and access to national campaigns. Page views are page views in the sense that if you’re able to sustain an overall increase, it increases your local market share and just makes you more attractive to local (or niche) advertisers. And, as Shelly said, national advertisers tend to buy flat fee instead of page views, it’s a win-win for everyone.

  And being part of a network (whether its as IB or Viacom or whomever) allows you to reach national advertisers as part of an aggregate network of pageviews.

  I can’t speak for IB (yes, I work there, but not in a role that gives me any insight into this issue), but for my own site, we’ve found that being linked to Drudge or Fark tends to bring an additional traffic spike, but also a bump in RSS feed subscriptions and longterm traffic.

  If you offer additional value to the visitors who come to your site for the quick headline, some of them will return. 3-5% might not seem like much, but it adds up over time.

• 17. Vlajbert  |  September 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am

  There are a couple of ways. Target based on referrer or geocode. Gota love Akamai.

• 18. John  |  September 21st, 2007 at 8:22 pm

  Wren, don’t blame the messenger. It’s the culture, stupid!

  And Semantics, CNN and all the other majors have plenty of the real stuff. Wren just offered up five of the more bizarre headlines, but there were no doubt 50 other headlines on that front at the same time. It’s like that everywhere.

• 19. David  |  September 23rd, 2007 at 7:48 pm

  All impressions are not created equal. There are definately differences between prices of national and of local impressions. There are also different CPM’s by vertical. Typically media buyers are looknig for vertical customers, those who will buy a car, take out a loan, etc. They are buying to reach consumers with a specific intended purchase in mind.
  But this really isn’t a revenue point, it’s a distribution point….but hang on a second before we get to that. We, IB, as well as the stations, can only regulate traffic so much. in the Television world, local is local. But in the internet, there’s barely a distinction between local and national advertising. Most of the national advertisers are looking for local traffic, rolled up to a national number.
  Mom and pop advertisers aren’t on station websites, they are using self serve into highly targeted links on google.
  So here’s the big thing; The internet through SEO, search and other ways of finding content, is expanding the form of distribution. To have a station try to regulate “we only want local traffic” to get higher cpms suggests you can regulate the web user. You can not.
  NBC announced they are putting their shows on the web last week. Iger did it at Disney 6 months ago. The station managers were furious. Iger at the time said “you can’t regulate how the consumer gets content)
  To Ed’s point, stations are in the content business. The digital world suggests a different paradigm for distribution, much different than anything stations are used to. Wouldn’t it make more sense for stations to figure out how to participate in the new revenue streams than try to keep their content behind a wall?

• 20. Thom  |  September 24th, 2007 at 11:33 am

  I’m not sure I understand David’s point. I agree that a lot of national advertisers are looking for local viewer but I’m not sure they are looking for them to “roll up” into a national number.

  If I’m a smart online advertiser I’m going to use all the segmentation information I can get my hands –including geographical. And I’m going to advertise on local news sites because I’m targeting a certain audience with a definable conversion activity in that region. (I’m working with a client who is looking to do just that).

  Of course I’m first going to look for sites that geotarget to ensure I get the traffic I want. (In that case a bump from CNN.com will mean nothing to me or the local site).

  If the sites aren’t geotargeting and my numbers are skewed because of a bump in traffic from CNN (and I’m not getting the audience I profiled) I would expect a lower conversion rated (of course this assumes I’ve accurately defined my conversion activities). A lower conversion rate on that type of ad buy would make me less likely to buy more ad space from that site. Sorry local sites.

  Advertisers are looking for conversion rates, not just impressions or reach anymore (this is why SEM is so popular and will never be abandon). Conversion on banner ads will always be lower than on search, but advertisers will compare conversion rates between sites. So not all traffic is really created equal.

  No one is trying to control the Internet user as David suggests, but I think they may be underestimating importance of segmentation and ad tracking.

  Is CNN.com’s inventory completely sold out?

  If so, perhaps local sites could benefit from a national bump. I think more likely this deal was born out of an effort to help CNN compete with MSNBC and yahoo with a traffic roll up, as some have suggested.

  CNN.com isn’t going to knowingly give anything away from the good of others. They may accidentally do it because they don’t understand, but they definitely got something out of this. And while some may get a bump in the short term. The long term, I would doubt CNN.com will send the type of traffic that will help a local site make money on local users.

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