It may not be the most obvious fit but if national advertisers get smart they could potentially benefit from over 300 hundred highly targeted advertising environments, and if they want to become sustainable hyperlocals need to look to the likes of Sainsbury’s to help them achieve that.
This is not new ground for me, if you happen to get me going on hyperlocal advertising or even online advertising in local media in general you’ll see me get all passionate. My latest victims were John V Willshire and Paul Squires. Paul invited us to take part in an interview as part of Imperica’s “In conversation with…” series. We talked about hyperlocal, it’s relationship with local media and the advertising opportunities that lie within.
John made the point that the fragmented nature of hyperlocals makes it difficult for national advertisers to target them.
So much effort would go into making an ad, that sending it to 4000 people wouldn’t be worthwhile; it needs to go to 4 million. In the hyperlocal model, you can’t serve the same ad to all of those communities.
As a hyperlocal site owner I wouldn’t accept a generic ad from a national advertiser either, so what’s the solution?
I’ve mentioned the Chasetown FC example many times – why show the site-wide ads to readers of Chasetown FC articles when you could get Chasetown FC’s sponsor to advertise on those and directly capture their target market online as well as on the pitch?! It’s simple and effective.
By the same token nation advertiser’s could focus their advertising.
JVW: An example might be Sainsbury’s, who is a client of ours. Through the tall model, we would place an ad on every hyperlocal site.
PJ: The reach would not matter to us [in Lichfield], as the nearest Sainsbury’s is 20 miles away!.. so there’s wastage.
JVW: Exactly! You just reach lots of people. The long model with Sainsbury’s is finding the hyperlocal sites relevant to the stores – using their data.
Data! Okay then, Sainsbury’s – here’s a (by no means exhaustive) map of hyperlocal sites in the UK. Now give me a map (open data please, none of this ‘store locator’ nonsense) of your stores in the UK – let’s squish them together and find the overlap.
There’s your hyperlocal target market. Now tie that into your offers database and hook it all into Addiply who deliver your targeted ads, one by one for as little as £2/week (maybe less).
Hyperlocal is still too fragmented.
It doesn’t have to be Addiply delivering the ads (though really I don’t personally see why you’d go elsewhere) but for such targeting to work there has to be a significant network to hook into.
Some hyperlocals don’t do advertising, others aren’t convinced it’s for them. That’s fine, but I think we all accept that sustainability is an issue and there’s no point in loosing money running one of these sites.
That’s where a little trickle of £2 per week from a well targeted Sainsbury’s ad might just fit in nicely.
There’s been plenty of talk about hyperlocals working together and continuing the conversations that take place at events like TAL10 and LNO10 but nothing concrete. What we need to become sustainable and move forward is to build the network of niches that is touted by so many as the way forward.
Such an alliance would present a more solid proposition to the likes of Sainsbury’s who would need convincing that the effort in targetting those 4,000 is actually worth it. That 4,000 would become 4,000 x 300+ with less relative wastage than a 30-second blast in the middle of Corrie.
Okay, so it’s not your 4 million but it’s getting closer…
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