Local media, particularly newspapers but also radio and TV stations, have a strong connection with their audiences which can be leveraged by national advertisers. But how do local media differentiate their value proposition as a stand-alone website compared to, say, a Hispanic portal?
“Centro provides value to publishers by working with clients who have desire to be on local online media,” Marc Kiven, EVP of Global Development of Centro, a media services and technology company, tells Portada.
“We provide our expertise on local online media to agencies,” Kiven adds.
“National and regional advertisers typically would target Hispanic users on demographics and IP targeting by contacting MSN or Yahoo. Centro puts together a plan with all local online media properties targeting Hispanic users in Los Angeles, for example. All local online radio, TV, newspaper etc. There could be 20 different websites that target Hispanic users, we pull them together as a single buy, something an advertiser would never do on their own.”
Kiven acknowledges that traffic to Hispanic websites is still limited and that one way to accommodate advertisers with more traffic is by casting a wider net through portals and foreign websites (with geotargeting).
Centro has a database of over 6000 local websites in various U.S. markets. Traffic to these websites ranges from tens of millions of unique visitors to a few thousand. According to Kiven, local media combined has more reach than the large portals. In June 2007, Centro appeared in comScore's listing of the top 50 ad-serving Internet properties, ranked by audience--entering at No. 20 with 74.6 million unique visitors, or 42% of the American online population. That compares favorably with Yahoo News, which attracted 32.3 million visitors in June.