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for web ad dayparts
Reaching the right folks when they are most open
By Toni Fitzgerald
If the popup ad is the most derided web ad format, the concept of dayparts for internet advertising is the least understood notion -- and perhaps the least appreciated.
A few years ago, industry analysts pegged daypart advertising as the next big thing. But with the dot.com downturn, soured economy and general apathy toward internet advertising since, next big things had a way of turning into the last bad idea, and this one surely did.
But that could change this year, with online ad revenues now projected to rebound after six straight quarters of declines.
This is the year the web is to come into its own, or so it is widely believed, and it may well become the year of the daypart.
More people think so. A new study commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America reports a large market for such targeted ad buys.
Out selling the idea is the At-Work Brand Network, formed last summer by several members of the Online Publishers Association and led by CBS MarketWatch.com.
The rising call for dayparts can be attributed in some part to better research, confirming the full value of the at-work audience, which surfs as heavily as at-home users and yet buys way more.
According to the NAA survey conducted by Minnesota Opinion Research, the internet is five times more effective than television at reaching consumers between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., when employees are logged onto news sites in huge waves.
“Reach has been one of the things seen as a weakness for interactive advertising. It’s seen as you can’t do the big bang, the big reach, of a 30-second spot on ‘Friends’ or the Super Bowl,” says CBS MarketWatch.com executive vice president of sales and marketing Scot McLernon.
“But that’s not necessarily true. You can reach a more affluent demographic, and that’s more important. So we formed a group that would have a large reach for one point of purchase, one ad solution.”
The At-Work Brand Network, using the handle AWBN, also includes NYTimes.com, USAToday.com, CNET Networks and weather.com. The five continue to sell their own brands, but they also sell the AWBN dayparts, in which one piece of creative is distributed to all of the sites at the same time. The ads can reach an attractive 17 million at-work users.
According to comScore Networks’ Media Metrix, that represents more than 43 percent of the at-work audience.
MarketWatch.com, for example, includes Tropicana orange juice advertising in the morning and Budweiser beer spots on Friday afternoons. The Bud spots have aired for two years.
McLernon says more and more sites will move to this advertising approach.
Interactive Advertising Board founder Richy Glassberg is a longtime daypart booster.
America Online made the strategy one of its selling points when it introduced AOL 8.0 last fall, promising six-hour morning and afternoon blocks, and again when the struggling company’s revitalization plan was revealed in December.
New York Times Digital has begun charging 25 percent more for ad space during its busy morning hours.
“I think that advertisers are accepting the ability of the web to be a piece of the overall marketing campaign,” McLernon says.
The increase in dayparts “began in the summer, bouncing along the bottom, and now they’ve headed straight out. As marketers start to embrace the web, you’ll see more and more of these practices, and dayparts will evolve.”
Sean Carton, managing partner at Carton Donofrio, says that many buyers still don’t understand the possibilities on the internet. Once they overcome their fears, dayparts will be among the most popular purchases.
“I think there’s a large market for dayparts once people start to understand the internet better,” Carton says. “I think it’s kind of one of these things where there’s still a little dot.com backlash a year or two out from it.
“People still haven’t gotten over a little reluctance to move dollars online. But we’ve experimented with it and had really good results.”
January 31, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Toni Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.
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