This guest column was contributed by Megan Malone, Senior Partner at Vici Media. It was originally published on the Vici Media blog.
Megan Malone
Radio station websites have many attractions for listeners — contests, promotions, streaming players, and jock updates. But even if a superb station site gets 100,000 visitors a month, sales management still struggles with creating digital revenue. The low cost per thousand for display ads can turn an impressive visitor number into a minimal amount of sales, even though the visitors are valuable P1 super fans of the station. The problem is intensified with lower traffic.
Audience retargeting pixels offer a solution. Retargeting enables advertising to your listeners after they leave your station website by following them around the web. You could retarget a station listener with display ads, video pre-roll, or even Facebook targeting. Retargeting works by placing a pixel, or lines of HTML code, on every page of a station site, which then deploys cookies on the listener’s browser. How does this help monetize the website? The retargeting pixel can be set so it will now display your clients’ ads as they go to other websites after leaving the station website.
How does this translate to numbers? The average Internet browser consumes more than 1,700 banner ads per month (comScore), so retargeting can multiply a station’s website inventory significantly. Sellers will not only have more inventory to sell, but even those not as digitally savvy know how to sell your listening audience and can add on this digital extension with every traditional buy. These P1 website browsers love your station, and obviously your on-air personalities, so you can even upsell an advertiser an endorsement fee to put your jocks online in the display ads.
Another benefit is that big ad agencies are willing to pay higher CPMs to buy this type of targeting. No one except the station can offer that station’s website retargeted audience. And because the idea of seeing a popular on-air personality promoting their product to that personality’s audience is so appealing, you can get buys from big clients who love endorsements.
It’s no secret that ad spending in digital is growing. In fact, 49.5 billion dollars was spent in online advertising alone in 2014 (Statista), making digital the largest portion of advertising media by revenue. Retargeting pixels are simple to implement, taking just minutes to install in the station website.