First Is Best In Getting New Media Ads

Broadcast companies that want to succeed in new media endeavors should get in the game early and give users -- and advertisers -- what they want, industry executives said Monday.

“If you have the opportunity to do it first … you should do it,” said Rob Richter, LIN TV’s SVP of new media.

“Being the first in the market is the theme here,” he said, citing LIN’s success with its online and mobile ventures that have become an integral part of the broadcast company’s reach.

Yet Richter -- a panelist discussing successful TV websites at Borrell Associates’ Local Online Advertising Conference in New York -- said that being first only goes so far if a new media venture isn’t engaging.

LIN, he said, has successfully navigated online and mobile waters since jumping in full steam in 2006 by tweaking the company’s core to fully incorporate new media into its traditional media -- and vice versa.

With a concerted focus on online content, staff development and new means of making money, LIN transformed its company philosophy over the last four years to fully incorporate new media, Richter said.

Doing that, for example, meant hiring or reassigning staff exclusively to new media, expanding new media ventures and technology and changing the company mindset -- particularly in local newsrooms -- to dismantle walls between traditional and new media.

LIN station journalists now are expected to produce multi-platform content that can be used and distributed in a variety of ways -- a change proceeded by “intense development.”

Those kinds of transformations, however, need the backing of company bigwigs to materialize, Richter said.

“It takes engagement from the top down,” Richter said. “If it doesn’t happen from the top of your company it probably won’t happen.”

Though Richter said LIN did report an increase in online revenue in the third quarter of 2009 -- the $10.4 million earned in that period was 13% of LIN’s total intake -- other panelists said making money off new media ventures does not necessarily mirror user interest.

Jimmy Goodmon, Capitol Broadcast Co.’s VP and regional manager of new media, said he’s been continually baffled by the lack of connection between the appeal of new media properties and the money they do – or don’t – produce.

“I can find zero correlation between traffic and revenue on some of our sites,” said Goodmon, who oversees Raleigh, N.C.-based properties including the immensely successful WRAL.com. “That’s almost incomprehensible.”

Though WRAL.com draws a huge audience – 55% of Raleigh-Durham market residents visit the site at least once a month -- Goodmon said the company had to establish other properties, both within and independent of the site, to lure advertisers.

“Go Ask Mom” -- a microsite accessed through WRAL.com -- is one such property. That site offers content provided by Duke University’s medical community. Another such property is HighSchoolOT.com. That site was established to host the school sports content that used to appear on WRAL.com. The number of people accessing it has increased four to five times since the change was made -- and ad sales have increased in turn, Goodmon said.

Giving special interest groups, like high school athletes and those who cater to them their own environment, increases the interest in the platform while also boosting targeted ad sales, he said.

Such strategies – along with specially training sales forces, creating unique advertising opportunities and accessing tools that track ads successes -- are incumbent upon any business that wants to make money off new media -- even when the content resonates with users on its own.

“Our ability to monetize our websites is not just as easy as crossing your fingers and waiting for all this money to come in,” he said.