From The Internet Radio Trenches, A Saleswoman's Story
- by Ken Liebeskind , June 6, 2001
“It’s extremely different from traditional radio, but it shouldn’t be,” she says. “Many get intimidated because it involves the Net. The biggest issue is whose medium is it, traditional or interactive.”
Surprisingly, she says traditionalists are the most enthusiastic buyers. “People from traditional agencies are more comfortable than interactives because they understand broadcast and the marketing concept,” she says. Interactive agencies are infrequent buyers because Gold is unable to provide them with exact listener data. “If I can’t give them exact info and count I’m of no use to them,” she says.
The other main reason traditional agencies are larger buyers is because they have larger budgets and aren’t afraid to try something new. Large companies may devote less than two percent of their budgets to interactive, but that is more than interactive budgets, which Gold calls tiny.
Gold can also sell directly to the client, which worked well in the case of Pfizer. The large pharmaceutical company, which buys radio in house, advertised 14 products on a campaign bought through MediaAmerica, including Certs and Benadryl. “They were educated on streaming and loved the opportunity to expand their reach,” she says.
Warner Lambert and the TV Food Network are other clients.
Speaking of reach, traditional advertisers already reach people at home and in their cars through TV and traditional radio. Internet radio allows them to reach people at work, where it is most frequently listened to. “The medium is targeted to upscale people at work on a one to one basis, which is appealing to them,” Gold says.
MediaAmerica places Internet ads on three major networks—Coollink, StreamAudio and SurferNetwork. Diane Williams, MediaAmerica’s general manager, says each network has different kinds of ads to sell. Coollink offers gateway ads, which play as sites load as well as instream ads that play during the broadcast. Streamaudio offers only gateways while SurferNetwork offers only instreams.
Williams says gateway ads are more expensive because “you have a captive audience and you’re sure they’re listening, while instream has the distraction factor”
But there are far fewer gateway ads than instream because gateway can play only once, as the page loads, while instream can play throughout the broadcast.
The networks may have as many as 500 stations each, giving advertisers lots of opportunities to target their ads to specific demographics. Ads can be placed across a network or formatically across individual stations.
Advertisers buy spots on a CPM basis and run campaigns over an extended period, usually three to four weeks, Gold says. She notes that most Internet radio commercials are 15 to 30 seconds, with none longer because “30 seconds seems long on the Internet, it’s not like traditional radio”
Internet radio experienced a downfall recently because of the enforcement of the Aftra fees for on air radio commercials played on the Internet, which caused many stations to stop broadcasting. The solution is the adoption of the technology needed to replace on air commercials with the Internet ads that MediaAmerica sells. Gold says more and more stations are acquiring the technology and must do so to stay current.
The other problem is that advertisers can’t afford to create original Internet radio ads to replace AFTRA spots. MediaAmerica solves that problem by reproducing existing spots. Jones MediaAmerica, the parent company, owns production studios that can reproduce radio scripts with its own talent and digitize TV spots, taking the actors out of the spots and replacing them with stock art, which is available at no charge. The result is no fee radio and flash animation spots that can be played on Internet radio.
