A Twist on Tips

Here's a nice twist I found on a "Top Tips" campaign...

Instead of a single sponsor, Yahoo used multiple continuing education programs (DeVry, Kaplan, etc.) to be 'featured schools' from a ten tips page that shared the best work-from-home job opportunities. To score even higher interest based on rising fuel costs, the tips article was additional tagged with the full title of "Stop Pumping Gas: Ten Hot Home Office Jobs."

Think about what multiple complementary businesses you could combine into a single Tips Campaign --
Pets, Auto, Finance, Travel, "Green", Education, Fashion, Cooking, etc... virtually limitless!

Here's a link to the full article/example:
http://education.yahoo.net/degrees/articles/featured_ten_hot_home_office_jobs.html

Knowledge is Power... and Profit

The Radio Audience Has Changed -- Has Your Marketing Strategy?
The two articles below paint a pretty clear picture of the evolution of the traditional Radio listener. Do your client proposals reflect these changes by incorporating effective Internet strategies to better reach your audience?

New ratings have been released, and a lot of stations have taken a hit. It's likely that analytics from your station website do not reflect the same data you're receiving from traditional ratings-by-sample-diary reports. Perhaps you've even seen a significant increase in Internet traffic. Do you know why? Do your clients? Are you educating them on the way today's Radio audience uses your broadcast and your website? Probably not.

The articles linked below provide valuable advice about your audience, but it's up to you to learn it and share it with your advertisers. Educating yourself on the new ways your audience uses media is the only way to continue creating more effective solutions to your client's marketing problems.

What's The Digital Application?
Interesting insights about how radio listeners -- in this case, members of station databases -- use other media and technologies, along with other revelations about how radio listeners' time is being sliced and diced by new media options.

Highlights...

• Nearly three in ten report they listen to AM/FM radio less or a lot less at home.
  
• More than 95% have access to a high-speed Internet connection.
  
• About 95% have a cell phone -- seven in ten text regularly.
  
• Nearly six in ten now own an iPod or a similar device.
  
• Four in ten have a TiVo or DVR.
  
• Over half regularly visit social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Classmates.com.
  
• More than four in ten have played Guitar Hero or Rock Band in the past year.
  
• Nearly one-fourth have participated in a fantasy league in the past year or so.
  
• More than two-thirds download/stream videos from sites like YouTube frequently/occasionally.
  
• Nearly half shop online each month.

Podcast Consumer Information
The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008 is the third study in this annual series on podcast consumption, and contains data derived from the 2008 Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia study. Highlights of this study were originally presented on April 16th at ad:tech SF.

Highlights:

• The audience for both audio and video podcasts has grown tremendously since last year.
  
• Podcast listeners enjoy additional listening opportunities.
  
• Podcast consumers are extremely attractive advertising targets, though difficult to reach via traditional interruption models.
  
• Podcast consumers are heavily involved with social networking.
  
• Podcasting is a viable alternative means to target attractive consumers who are otherwise proving difficult to reach with traditional advertising.
  
• Podcasters should consider lifestyles, context and even potential 'dayparting' for their audiences.

Tuning Out TV

An Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research TV & Technology study says some marketers have concerns about television as an ad medium and are relying more on the Web.

Some of the details of the January survey of 78 major advertisers:

• 62% said TV ads have become less effective in the past two years
• 87% will spend more on Web advertising this year
• 44% are experimenting with TV ad models to work with consumer use of digital video recorders
• 49% are working on ad models for video-on-demand programs
• 87% said branded entertainment (such as sponsored shows) will play a stronger role in TV advertising in the coming year

An especially alert Radio Account Executive could probably name at least three opportunities that already exist in our Web tools that can not only take advantage of this trend, but provide valuable VBRs for contacting targeted prospects who could take advantage of the ideas.