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At CBS, new focus on the local picture
By Heidi Dawley
Sep 18, 2007 - 1:05:28 AM
The hot thing on the internet these days is local advertising, which now outpaces national, and that's leading to an influx of major media players into local markets, where they hope to take a share of those ad dollars.
The latest is CBS. CBS Audience Network, which distributes the company’s digital content, is going hyperlocal by bringing local CBS TV and radio stations' web sites into its online network. Visitors to those station sites will now be able to access a slew of videos, from sports to news and entertainment from the network and its affiliates.
But just what impact it will have is a big question. There's already intense competition among local newspapers, TV and radio stations, along with independent sites for local users and advertisers. Will local users be all that drawn to visit local sites for video content they can view just as easily elsewhere?
But also working against CBS is a long history of big media brands that have attempted to go local and failed, including Microsoft, AOL, MSNBC, Yahoo and Google.
“I've got a huge degree of skepticism about this. If the internet has proven anything, it’s that big brands don’t translate well in the online environment,” says Gordon Borrell, president of Borrell Associates, a research firm specializing in local internet.
“All have either disappeared or have no brand recognition,” he says. “The best and most popular sites are home-grown and don’t start at the network level.”
The CBS Audience Network launched this spring as a platform from which to distribute its video content to third parties, and its initial signups included AOL, Microsoft and Comcast.
It was a big departure. CBS had longed aimed to attract visitors to its sites to watch videos, with little success. The new strategy was to send that content out to sites that already had the visitors, ensuring far greater exposure for that content.
“We want to follow our users instead of forcing them to follow us,” explains Patrick Keane, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive.
Videos available on the Audience Network are free to the user, with the revenue coming from pre-roll ads.
In May, not long after the Audience Network's launch, CBS expanded it to provide content as well to community-building web sites and social-application providers. Then last week it said it was further expanding it to include local sites, those of 144 local radio stations, 29 company-owned TV stations, and up to 183 affiliated stations.
In addition to video from CBS Network, visitors will also gain access to clips produced by other local stations within the network.
The aim, says Keane, is to create more local advertising opportunities for local advertisers but also to enable CBS to sell advertising to national advertisers targeting local and regional markets.
“We want to get the content in front of as many users as possible. The larger that footprint, the better our opportunity to sell ads,” says Keane.
The timing would seem ideal. After trailing national advertising for years, local web advertising is expected to go through explosive growth. EMarketer last week forecast that local online advertising will hit $7.8 million by 2011, up from $2.1 billion in 2006.
“The reality of the web has been national but there is an evolution towards local, and so we want to get in front of those users locally,” says Keane.
But Keane dismisses the suggestion that CBS is suddenly attempting to invade local markets as a new major player bent on grabbing off a big share of local ad dollars.
He notes that local CBS stations are already recognized brands and already major players when it comes to generating local ad dollars.
CBS is simply enriching the depth of content those stations offer on their web sites with the addition of videos from its Audience Network. Says Keane: “We already have affiliates that reach deep into communities, and this is just more content for web sites."
Meanwhile, in online ratings for the week ended Sept. 9, NexTag was the No. 1 advertiser for the second straight week with 5.02 million impressions, followed by No. 2 Experian Group Limited at 4.27 million. With 33.4 million ads served, Yahoo was again the top advertising site, well ahead of No. 2 MySpace at 3.5 million.
Due to a Nielsen error, top parent company and brand data as well as average usage estimates were unavailable at press time.
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Top 25 advertisers
(excludes house ads)
Through Sept. 9 |
|
#
|
Company
|
Impressions (000)
|
|
1 |
NexTag, Inc.
|
5,020,815
|
|
2 |
Experian Group Limited
|
4,265,110
|
|
3 |
Reunion.com L.L.C.
|
3,983,630
|
|
4 |
Netflix, Inc.
|
3,324,944
|
|
5 |
Countrywide Financial Corporation
|
2,615,647
|
|
6 |
AT&T Corp.
|
2,341,383
|
|
7 |
HSBC Holdings plc
|
1,858,857
|
|
8 |
InterActiveCorp
|
1,642,659
|
|
9 |
Low Rate Source
|
1,533,771
|
|
10 |
Apollo Group, Inc.
|
1,474,314
|
|
11 |
Verizon Communications, Inc.
|
1,243,415
|
|
12 |
Wachovia Corporation
|
918,510
|
|
13 |
Privacy Matters
|
842,721
|
|
14 |
Monster Worldwide, Inc.
|
737,852
|
|
15 |
United Online, Inc.
|
672,875
|
|
16 |
Echostar Communications Corporation
|
652,659
|
|
17 |
degreeUSA
|
583,009
|
|
18 |
Comcast Corporation
|
572,058
|
|
19 |
StubHub.com
|
561,447
|
|
20 |
National Telephone Advisory
|
504,700
|
|
21 |
Ford Motor Company
|
489,187
|
|
22 |
Course Advisor, Inc.
|
459,742
|
|
23 |
E*TRADE FINANCIAL Corp.
|
434,124
|
|
24 |
Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.
|
431,919
|
|
25 |
Xadvantage
|
393,505
|
|
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance
Note: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance service estimated online advertising expenditures account for CPM-based image-based advertising. All reported estimated expenditures and impressions do not account for the following placement types: text only, paid fee services, performance-based campaigns, sponsorships, barters, in-stream ("pre-rolls") players, messenger applications, partnership advertising, promotions and email campaigns. AdRelevance currently does not report estimated spending for paid search advertising. Above data does not include any house advertising activity. Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance reporting data reflects advertising activity served on pages accessible via the World Wide Web and not within AOL's proprietary service. |
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Top 25 advertising sites
(excludes house ads)
Through Sept. 9 |
|
|
Company
|
Impressions (000)
|
|
1 |
Yahoo!
|
33,411,327
|
|
2 |
MySpace
|
3,521,182
|
|
3 |
MSN
|
2,947,087
|
|
4 |
eBay
|
1,193,904
|
|
5 |
AOL.com
|
1,113,029
|
|
6 |
Juno
|
558,669
|
|
7 |
The Weather Channel
|
555,223
|
|
8 |
FOXNEWS.COM
|
528,674
|
|
9 |
Comcast.net
|
516,403
|
|
10 |
ESPN.com
|
499,941
|
|
11 |
NetZero
|
499,282
|
|
12 |
MSNBC
|
472,453
|
|
13 |
IMDb
|
465,003
|
|
14 |
YouTube
|
352,354
|
|
15 |
New York Times
|
319,695
|
|
16 |
iWon
|
288,389
|
|
17 |
CBS SportsLine
|
272,756
|
|
18 |
The Weather Underground
|
200,915
|
|
19 |
Classmates
|
197,943
|
|
20 |
FOX Sports on MSN
|
192,276
|
|
21 |
Photobucket
|
190,501
|
|
22 |
EarthLink
|
188,093
|
|
23 |
eBay Motors
|
183,281
|
|
24 |
Amazon
|
179,737
|
|
25 |
Realtor.com
|
175,752
|
|
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance
Note: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance service estimated online advertising expenditures account for CPM-based image-based advertising. All reported estimated expenditures and impressions do not account for the following placement types: text only, paid fee services, performance-based campaigns, sponsorships, barters, in-stream ("pre-rolls") players, messenger applications, partnership advertising, promotions and email campaigns. AdRelevance currently does not report estimated spending for paid search advertising. Above data does not include any house advertising activity. Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance reporting data reflects advertising activity served on pages accessible via the World Wide Web and not within AOL's proprietary service. |
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