Church isn’t just for Sunday mornings. Advertisers targeting specific demographic groups are reaching them via poster and postcard media at church gatherings during the week, and all week long.

To find out how to get your client’s message to targeted audiences where they pray and play, read on.

This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.

Fast Facts

What
Ads placed on posters displayed in church lobbies and on postcards distributed to church goers.

Who
Ambient Planet, headquartered in New York.

How it works
Ads are placed in church lobbies in as posters and postcards.

“We ran a program this past January to promote the PBS show ‘African American Lives 2’ in Baptist and Catholic churches,” says sales manager Linda Bueno. “Posters and take-one materials were installed in the vestibules of the participating churches.”

Posters are unframed, measuring 11 inches wide by 17 inches high, and are posted on bulletin boards in lobbies and vestibules of churches.

Posters and postcards use the same creative.

The message has to be beneficial to congregations, Bueno says. “Obviously nothing risqué could be used.”

PBS used the same graphic it used to promote the television series in other venues. Its ads were displayed in 72 churches across eight markets.

“We’re as efficient as possible, and there are also strategic reasons," says Jim Dreesen, director of advertising for PBS Primetime. “One voice, one vision, one visual.”

The number of posters is contingent on the size of the church.

Creative is provided by the advertiser and is four-color.

Campaigns are limited to one advertiser at a time for each church.

Local as well as national advertisers are a good fit, Bueno says.

Markets
The program is available in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Seattle, St. Louis, Baltimore, San Diego, Raleigh-Durham and Nashville.

Numbers
A standard campaign delivers one to two posters and 500 to 1,000 postcards to each venue in the network.

How it is measured
Traffic counts can be used for measurement. Additionally, a call for action can be built into the campaign and used for measurement as well.

What product categories do well
Entertainment, consumer products and insurance are top categories.

Alcohol and tobacco ads are not accepted.

Demographics
Groups can be targeted by zip code and by denomination.

For the PBS series, Baptist and Catholic churches in African-American neighborhoods were targeted.

Advertisers can also target a general audience or a broad demographic like families through church networks, Bueno says.

Making the buy
Lead time is six to eight weeks. A minimum buy is one month.

Advertisers can buy posters or postcards or both. Sampling is also a possibility at some locations.

Who’s already in churches
PBS is currently winding up a campaign for “African American Lives 2.”

What they’re saying
“PBS only spends media money on a few programs a year, on big events. Our attempt for each is to achieve a marketplace presence, to go out and touch people where they live. For ‘Bob Dylan’ we went into coffee shops and record shops. For ‘The War’ we went into VFW halls and Jewish community centers. In this case, for 'African American Lives 2,' we thought churches were a good place to go. They’re the center of the community, a gathering place, waterhole, where people get together on Friday nights, Saturday nights, Sundays to meet with friends and family.” – PBS’s Jim Dreesen

Web site info
Ambient Planet at http://www.ambient-planet.com/