The financial news is always riveting, and the same can be said for the site’s special-format ad campaigns—now sold in dayparts. Everyone from business executives to investors visits CBSMarketwatch
because it provides up-to-the-minute financial news. “It’s proprietary real-time financial and business news we build ourselves,” says Scot McLernon, executive vice president of sales. “They come in
throughout the day to see what’s happening in the market, on the street, and in their own portfolios.”
And when they come in, they see a variety of advertising in the latest formats. “It’s an
evolving medium, and advertising solutions are consistently changing,” McLernon says. “We try and find a better mousetrap that will compel our clients to have success.”
Budweiser and AT&T are two
advertisers that have tried the latest innovation, a 10-second Intro Message movie that plays before visitors get into the site. “They sit through the message once every two weeks. We cookie them, so
they see it infrequently,” McLernon says. After the intro message plays, a skyscraper and banner appear on the home page from the same advertiser. “It’s synched up, with a guarantee of 250,000
uniques,” he says.
The intro message unit was launched in December, with others signed up to use it. Prior to that, MarketWatch introduced the Rich Media Window, a large-size unit based on the
new IAB standard. It plays a live action commercial without launching a Real Media player. The unit appears on 95 percent of the site’s editorial pages.
A recent MarketWatch innovation that
mimics the offline world is daypart advertising. Advertisers can own the front page at certain times of day, moving across the country to cover each time zone. It amounts to a five-hour run. “It’s
like radio ads at a certain time,” McLernon says. It appeals to traditional advertisers who are used to buying time this way. Budweiser was the first to use it.
A survey participant says the
Intro Message and Rich Media Window “have that wow factor, so it’s a great experience.”
Unique audience: 4.57 million Time per person: 5 hours 40 minutes 2001 ad revenue, through Sept: $13.9
million