BORRELL LOCAL ONLINE AD CONFERENCE

The Importance Of Owning The Brand

Domains are brands and well-known or intuitive brands should be more valuable to Internet advertisers. If someone has to find you on a search engine, you're not branded.
NetNewsCheck,

A pair of local Internet entrepreneurs shared some surprisingly traditional media advice at the Borrell Associates Local Online Advertising Conference in New York City Tuesday.

Domains are brands, said David Castello, COO of Castello Cities Network, and well-known or intuitive brands should be more valuable to Internet advertisers.

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Castello and his brother Michael have built a successful chain of geo-domain city guides like PalmSprings.com, Myrtlebeach.com, SanDiego.com, and Nashville.com, often focusing on tourism-related advertising.

“When we started PalmSprings.com, business owners would ask ' Why should I advertise on PalmSprings.com?' " said David Castello. “Because we own the brand” was the answer.

“We didn't like the pennies per click thing,” he continued. “Because we own the brand, we'll charge a static rate like a newspaper” and lock in longer sponsorships. In an attractive golf market like Palm Springs, home page tile ads sell for $20,000 to $70,000 a year, he said. “Because we're the intuitive brand.”

In addition to geodomains, Castello believes that media names also have long-established value. “It's amazing how many local media didn't use their established local brands.” And: “If someone has to find you on a search engine, you're not branded.”

Until PalmSprings.com was generating seven figures a year in revenue, “we weren't on local media's radar screen,” said David Castello.

The sites typically employ two sales staffers per market along with an editor for classifieds or forums. “We like being small, we like being mobile, we like being efficient,” said Mike Castello. The sites derive no income from Google or Yahoo programs, but are starting to charge to develop effective landing pages that attract search-engine traffic or complete conversions after a search-engine-marketing program.

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