By: Staff Reports Serving Online Ads Based On Day, Week
(Adweek IQ) Financial
news site CBS MarketWatch is now selling advertising for specific parts of the
day? such as mornings or afternoons? and is launching the new approach today
with ads for Anheuser-Busch.
Ads for Budweiser and O'Doul's will appear on the front page of the site every
Friday over the next 10 months between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. in every U.S. time
zone.
The ads "allow a presence in front of consumers when they are most likely to use
the products," said Scot McLernon, executive vice president of sales for San
Francisco-based CBS MarketWatch.
For example, in Budweiser's case, McLernon said the beer company wanted to catch
people "in the mindset before they go out for the weekend, or before they go out
to have an adult beverage after work."
While the technology to serve ads based on day and time of week is not new, few
online companies are currently selling dayparts, a practice widespread in radio
and TV, said analyst Walter Janowski of the Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group.
The approach is effective online, according to Jim Nail, senior analyst at
Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. "Predictably, for consumer products,
lunchtime and weekend [ads] seem to get better results. Data from Avenue A and
Hook Media shows that dayparts does impact clickthrough/conversion rates."
Marissa Gluck, analyst at New York-based Jupiter, agreed that dayparts
advertising online has potential. "Though ESPN is selling ads by day of the
week, overall it's hard to find others doing something similar, but it makes
perfect sense," said Gluck. "For radio, drive time is prime time, for television
the hours of 8-11 p.m. But online prime time is usually during work hours."
The dayparts program is part of an overall redesign of the CBS MarketWatch site
that supports a variety of new ad formats. The Anheuser-Busch ads will appear in
several formats, including a rich-media window appearing as a faint backdrop
behind the site, according to CBS MarketWatch.
MarketWatch.com Inc., the parent company of CBS MarketWatch, has been around
since 1997 and operates three Web sites, airs financial news over CBS Network
television and sends out hourly updates on the MarketWatch.com radio network.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here