Some display advertising I saw in Mumbai last year

Mark Ramsey posts a link with the words…

If your clients are advertising on your station’s website (and I hope they are – and not for nothing, either), then how do you value those “clicks”? How do you communicate to your client what each click is worth, given that each click represents a “lead” which may convert to a sale?

Well, the equation is here.

Now, are you selling that real estate for what it’s worth?

No, no and thrice no. Stop this madness.

Yes, of course radio stations should be selling multi-media campaigns: uniquely, the benefits of radio (immediacy, emotion, push-info) and the benefits of online (permanency, detail, data-capture), work perfectly together. Where I work during the day at Virgin Radio in London, we’ve been doing this to great effect over the last seven years, and it generates significant revenue for us. (Incidentally, our new-platform broadcasting counts for over 28% of our TSL – so it’s great marketing, too).

But ‘display advertising’, whether on the radio (as a spot, sponsorship or promotions), or on the internet (as a display ad or microsite), should be charged exactly the same: by how many people see or hear the ad.

If someone’s creative is poor or irrelevant, nobody will react to the advertising. In internet terms, that means nobody will click the ad. It’s not the website’s fault that nobody clicked: it’s wholly, 100%, the advertiser’s fault.

Take ‘cost per click’ to its logical conclusion. Imagine an ad that says “John Lewis – best prices guaranteed: click here to buy”. As a customer, I read the ad. I’ve been told that John Lewis guaranteed the best prices for me. This is useful information. But I don’t click the ad, because I’m not ready to buy anything right now. Is that advert really worth nothing to John Lewis? So why sell it to them on a cost-per-click basis?

It’s sometimes tempting to forget how branding works, and to purely sell on short-term results. The internet is great at measurement – but just because “we can” shouldn’t automatically mean that “we should”. So, sell your advertisers branding messages on your website, inclusion in your weekly newsletters, full microsites as well as front-page presence; and don’t sell them cost-per-click: it’s not the correct way to sell display advertising. You should sell them what this advertising is worth – which may be based around page impressions, and what you consider your audience to be worth.

Incidentally, if you see virtually any presentation from me, you’ll hear me mention the IAB/RAB’s joint research, which says that at any given time 20% of people who are online are also listening to radio. So, radio is in a unique position to tell people what to search for in their Google search box. Brand advertising is the reason why I’ll search for “Audio TT” and not “sports car”; and it’s brand advertising that radio excels in: particularly since it fits so well with the web. So, let’s sell that: and stop talking about cost-per-click. It’s the wrong way to sell display advertising.

Cost-per-click is not, however, the wrong way to sell advertising to a relevant and proactive audience, like within search results. But that’s wholly different traffic to what a normal radio station website will deliver, and a conversation for another day.

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