HERE'S THE MAP FOR NEW REVENUE: START DIGGING

There’s $12.6 billion in them thar hills, according to the latest Borrell Associates forecast for online advertising—and that’s just the figure for local Web advertising in 2008.

That’s great news, until you realize that, based upon 2007 figures, local TV’s share is a mere 9.3 percent—anemic compared to 33.4 percent for local newspapers and 43.7 percent for “pure Internet plays” such as Google.

Now common sense tells us this is unacceptable. If your total viewership doesn’t exceed the local number of Google visitors and newspaper readers, then you must be off the air. 

Only some of this disparity is explained by the greater number of ad salespeople working for local papers. So why haven’t TV stations gotten the message that they need to close the gap? Does someone need to draw them a picture?

Well somebody has: The Frank N. Magid people in a study conducted for Hearst-Argyle Television. In fact, they’ve drawn you a map.

Hearst-Argyle CEO David Barrett summarized the findings this week at the annual conference of the Association of National Advertisers in New York. Among the highlights:

• Viewers report they’re “more engaged” with local news than other “genres.” And at 55 percent, TV is by far the primary source for that news —more than twice as prevalent as the Web (26 percent) or newspapers (14 percent.)
  
  
• Local TV News is “more DVR-proof”—most viewers watch it live or play it back in real time.
  
  
• Local TV-driven news makes ads more effective. Respondents report that ads within local TV news create “greater product/service awareness” than ads in other media.

Now that comes as mighty good news for your beleaguered sales team. But wait. The summary goes further and examines local TV news Web sites. The findings:

• Local TV Web sites are the “most important source” for weather information.
  
  
• Local TV news Web sites are among the most frequently used for local news—second only to generic search engines, but the gap is closing.
  
  
• Local TV news viewers are relatively affluent and early adopters of new technology: 44 percent have DVRs, 32 percent have HDTVs.
  
  
• Local TV news Web sites attract more online video viewers than sites for cable or network news, or even primetime programming.

You can read a more complete summary by clicking here. And later this month, Hearst-Argyle and Magid will release the full results of the survey.

But what are you waiting for? The summary alone gives you all you need. This isn’t just a map, it’s a treasure map. And it leads straight to additional revenue on air and especially online. So tell your sales team to grab their shovels. Here are five places to start digging:

1) Affluent consumers are a rarity these days.  And there are advertisers desperate to find them. Start pitching your Web sites to banks, investment firms, financial advisers and retirement plans. And with luxury items falling off America’s shopping list, there are all sorts of vendors eager to reach viewers with a hankering for high tech: electronics chains, discount retailers, cell phone companies and cable and satellite companies.

 And while you’re at it, why not turn your FCC obligation into a profit center? Here’s a fresh opportunity to package sponsorships around your viewer education campaign about the coming digital transition.

2) Sure, winter is almost over, but now you have a fresh reason to market your weather information year-round. Local TV’s lead position in weather news is a good excuse to find a sponsor for your Doppler radar, your StormWatch team, or even the time and temperature.

3) I confess it was news to me that Internet users watch more video on local TV news Web sites than all those other TV-related sites. And it’s going to surprise your ad clients, too. So get out there and educate them with special sponsorships for such daily features as a short video news summary, a separate sports highlights summary, extra (“in depth”) material from interviews, perhaps with news analysis, or a kicker-style “video-of-the-day.”

4) It’s a bit trickier to capitalize on your news’s “DVR-Proof” status without disparaging the rest of your inventory. Train your sales team to describe your news viewers as “highly engaged”—so much so that even though a high percentage use DVRs, your newscast is the show they’re most likely watch in entirety. This makes your news the ideal place to launch a new product or service and the ideal vehicle for launching an advertiser’s watch-to-win promotion that gets explained in the news but pays off during syndicated or primetime fare.

5) While cell phone and PDA users are not expressly mentioned in the Magid study, it’s not unreasonable to extrapolate these findings to pitch your new and forthcoming digital services. Now is the time to get advertisers thinking about “pushing” their brand to your viewers alongside digital headlines, sports scores and weather alerts.

As David Barrett told the ANA, local TV is uniquely well-suited to help advertisers to leverage digital video content. After all, you “have exceedingly strong, trusted on-air, online and mobile content brands in key local markets."

That’s a substantial advantage over the Googles and newspapers of the world. But the only way TV stations can hold onto it is to start exploiting it, and fast.

Market Share by Arthur Greenwald showcases successful local marketing, promotion and sales efforts every Monday in TVNEWSDAY. What is your station doing to grow Web sites revenue?  Share your success stories by writing to Arthur at greenwald@tvnewsday.com.