• by Wayne Friedman , October 19, 2010

TV station owner Nexstar Broadcasting Group will double up its efforts to market TV advertising to local marketers -- by using an established campaign to send out messaging.

The "101 Reasons TV Advertising Works" campaign, started in October 2009, will double the number of spots available to TV stations, as well as provide them with promotional tools to create custom local messages for their markets. Those can include testimonials for local marketers.

The original campaign included 39 customizable spots for Nexstar's stations in 34 markets. The TV group says this has generated increases in new-to-television local direct billings and nearly a 10% increase in total local advertising revenues since the campaign kicked off.

Now, Nexstar is rolling out 81 spots -- 5-second- to 30-second-long messages, also customizable for every Nexstar station.

Perry A. Sook, chairman, president and CEO of Nexstar Broadcasting Group, stated: "We helped hundreds of local businesses offset the impact of the challenging economic climate by demonstrating how local television was the most effective method for companies to connect with local customers."

In one big video presentation, titled "Why Spot Now," Nexstar touts the still-strong influence of big TV usage. For example, daily household viewing across all demographics is at record levels: 8 hours and 21 minutes in 2009, which is more than the average daily sleep or work time. There are 321 million television sets in the U.S. -- 17 million more than there are people.