Each different advertising medium presents a unique opportunity to make an impact on a target audience—driving results through increased sales or brand awareness.
Whatever the medium, the nuances of ad placement and timing within the campaign schedule can help increase the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. Placement in media buying generally refers to when and where the advertisements will run, and it greatly impacts the overall performance of a campaign.
Timing is everything.
At what time of day might consumers be most receptive to your advertising message, and in what medium? What day of the week?
What time of year is it, and how much competition there might be for your ad space—upcoming events, political campaigns, holidays? From there determine campaign run dates, and drill down further to determine specific placements within those run dates.
Below are a few basic tips and concepts for placing local radio, print, or online ads. By no means is it a comprehensive list, but it’s a start.
Radio Dayparts
Radio advertising is sold in dayparts, or segments of the day around which a station’s programming is customized to appeal to a target audience. Listenership changes depending on time of day or day of week (drive time, weekends, overnights).
Dayparts for radio are standardized across markets and include
• M-F 6a – mid
• M-F 6a – 7p
• M-F 10a – 3p
• M-F 3p – 7p
• M-F 7p – midnight
• Sa – Sun 6a-midnight
• Sa 6a – 7p
• Su 6a – 7p
Scheduling Tips
Request equal rotation within a daypart for the placement of radio ads.
If you buy the 6a-midnight daypart and the ads only run from 5:00 pm to midnight, they won’t reach that station’s entire potential audience—that audience was likely a key factor in selecting the station to participate in the advertising campaign, and negotiating equal rotation ensures potential reach is maximized.
Adjacencies are commercial break positions within the program. Look for adjacencies to programs that are particularly strong or have a special appeal to your target audience.
For example, if you’re buying radio for a coffee shop, negotiate adjacencies within the morning show programming hours.
Think about the front end or back end of the commercial breaks—if there are 4 minutes of commercials and they’re all 20 seconds, that’s 12 ads in a single break! Your message may have more staying power if it’s the first one delivered.
As with any advertisement in any medium, the relevance of the ad in the context in which it reaches the audience can make or break the campaign.
Consider placement in relevant content sections with newspaper and other print publications. Some publishers offer frequency discounts, too—lower rates offered to frequent advertisers.
In addition, there’s often a large amount of ad space available on a local newspaper’s website. With more and more readers going online to view the news, this space is becoming a more lucrative opportunity for advertisers targeting local audiences.
Online
Online advertising provides several options for delivering relevant content, including search advertising and behavioral targeting. Local websites also offer opportunities to target a niche audience in a given local market, whether through the daily newspaper website or a niche community blog.
For this comparatively young medium, the advertising rules are still being established, but online is typically sold in
• Impressions, or Cost per Impression, based on the number of times an ad appears, or the number of page views. A typical measurement is CPM, or cost per thousand impressions.
• Clicks, or Cost per Click. CPC advertisers pay only when their ad is clicked. Popular pay-per-click (PPC) advertising programs include Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.
As with traditional media, placement should be considered in your planning within the chosen websites. On newspaper websites, you can request placement your restaurant ad on the Food & Wine page, for example. Or if the site leverages content tagging, request to have your ad appear alongside content with the tag “restaurant.”
The degree to which online advertising can be targeted varies with the website and advertising program. Be sure to preview the site prior to negotiations to determine the best place for the ads based on content, geographic reach, keyword, or behavior.
If the website you’re advertising on can’t offer at least some level of targeting, the impressions on that site are going to be broader and may not be reaching the exact audience defined for the campaign.
As mentioned earlier, not a comprehensive list. We’d love to hear your comments and experiences with trying different ad placements and schedules. Thanks for reading.