Surfernetwork's Mix Of Online Ads Makes the Cut
- by Ken Liebeskind , June 5, 2001
The SurferNetwork stations that made the list include WKIE-FM (Chicago Top 40), WYNY-FM (New York country), CKFM (Toronto, adult contemporary) and CKZZ-FM (Vancouver, Top 40).
The reason SurferNetwork stations are now being ranked is that the company just signed up with MeasureCast and installed its software that monitors and counts listenership.
The company, founded in 1999 and based in Mt. Olive, NJ, streams the Internet broadcasts of 130 stations, and is making inroads in bringing advertising to online radio in two different ways: it is replacing terrestrial radio commercials with Internet only ads and is running banner only ads with the radio broadcasts.
The company is one of the first that began to replace terrestrial ads with Internet only ads, although it must do it on a station-by-station basis, as the stations have to install the technology in their systems. Once they do, terrestrial or on air ads can be replaced with Internet only ads, which play like-radio spots and have clickable banners that take listeners to sponsors' websites.
"It's still early but we've run over a dozen campaigns," says chairman/CEO Gordon Bridge, who notes Visa, BMW and Caress have been among the first sponsors.
The strongest selling point of the advertising is that it's highly targetable. SurferNetwork gathers information about listeners when they register to hear the stations. "It's opt in, we don't drop cookies," Bridge says, explaining the company gets information about listeners age, gender and zip code it can use to target ads.
Campaigns can be targeted to groups of listeners across all 130 stations or any segment of them, with Bridge noting that the ability to aggregate listeners across the stations is crucial because the number of Internet radio listeners remains much lower than terrestrial radio.
Since Caress is a hand cream, the campaign was targeted to female listeners, he says.
In addition to Internet only audio ads, SurferNetwork sells banner only ads in two different ways. Stations that don't have the technology to run Internet only ads can run banners. Banners can also be played on all stations during music interludes. When a song plays on an Internet station, the name of the song and artist and a picture of the cd is displayed on the screen for 20 seconds. Then a banner ad appears. "There's plenty of time to serve up other information when no ads play," Bridge says, saying song information and advertising rotate while the music plays.
"We're running tens of millions of banner ads each month, compared with a few million rich media ads," he says, which stresses the importance of banner advertising on Internet radio. "The combination of banner only and instream rich media is where we'll end up."
SurferNetwork sells some of its own advertising and partners with rep firms. One of the rep firms it works with is Media America, a New York firm that traditionally sold network radio ads and is now selling them on SurferNetwork's online radio network. It also partners with L90, the online ad network, to sell banner advertising.
SurferNetwork also benefited from the AFTRA controversy in April, which caused many Internet radio stations to stop broadcasting because of the fees AFTRA demanded for terrestrial radio commercials that played on the Internet. The situation demonstrated the need for Internet only ads that wouldn't be required to pay the fees. "The industry standard for online radio has become replacing ads," Bridge says. "We're delighted the industry has moved in that direction."
MEASURECAST WEEKLY RATINGS:
The MeasureCast Internet Radio Index for the
week of May 28 to June 3 increased 2.4% from 149 to 152, meaning the total number of hours streamed by on-line broadcasters measured by MeasureCast has increased 52% since January.
Among the 21 comparable stations in the weekly MeasureCast Top 25T list, 13 showed an increase in TTSL, and 17 experienced an increase in their estimated audience size, or CUME. Significant increases in TTSL were made by Santa Monica College's KCRW-FM/89.9 (up 106%), and Internet-only Alice New Media (up 49%).
Other facts from this week's report: - 76% of all listening occurred between 5 a.m. PDT and 5 p.m. PDT. - The peak listening hour was noon Pacific, with 8% of the day's listening. - The peak listening day was Thursday, with 21% of all TTSL occurring on this day. - Memorial Day Monday was only 8% of the week's listening, compared to 16% the previous Monday. - 54% of listeners are under 35 years old; 25% are younger than 25 and 7% are over the age of 55. - The largest single age group (29% of all listeners) is comprised of people 25-34. - More men (72%) listen to Internet radio than do women (28%). - The South claims the largest number of Internet radio listeners (33%); followed by the West (30%), the Northeast (19%), and the Midwest (19%). - Top international streaming countries include: The United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Mexico.
MEASURECAST MONTHLY RATINGS:
The
MeasureCast Top 50 Internet radio stations ranking for May was topped by Internet-only broadcaster MEDIAmazing.com. Taking second place was U.K.-based Virgin Radio, followed by another Internet-only
broadcaster, 3WK Undergroundradio.com. Internet-only stations made up half of this month's Top 50 list and took seven of the top 10 spots. MeasureCast is the first company to provide Internet radio
broadcasters with next-day audience size and demographics information.
Seventeen stations appeared on the Top 50 list in both April and May. Of these, 11 are Internet-only, and six are terrestrial stations simulcasting on the Web. Together, these stations streamed 13% more hours in May than they did in April. The total number of hours streamed by the Internet-only stations increased 14.8% over the previous month, while the terrestrial radio stations streamed 4.8% more hours. For the year, listening to stations measured by MeasureCast is up 52%.
