NBC and Fox Local Sites Show Renewed Local News and Ad Competition
Important Details: Local broadcasters are getting savvier about the local online market, ramping up both product and sales activities. For example, NBC Local Media, the company’s owned-and-operated business unit that it renamed last year, says it reaches “nearly one-third of the US population in the top 10 markets. We touch 40 million households and eight million monthly unique users online, tapping into an audience of affluent, active consumers.”First to relaunch was NBCChicago.com. NBCLosAngeles.com, NBCSanDiego.com and NBCBayArea.com launched Oct. 16, followed by NBCDFW.com, NBCPhiladelphia.com and NBCWashington.com on Oct. 20, with NBCConnecticut.com and NBCNewYork.com scheduled for Oct. 27. The sites, formerly hosted on the Internet Broadcasting platform, will change their URLs, so, for instance in Chicaco, wmaq.com becomes nbcchicago.com.
“Locals Only” is the messaging at the top of the site. On product, the site is strongly local in news, entertainment, “around town,” health and the TV staples of weather and traffic, both highlighted. There are lots of link-offs, to stories and in the Chicago Tribune (owned by Tribune Company, owner of WGN, a rival of NBC Chicago WMAQ TV) and Time Out publications. Events are powered by Zvents (see our March 2008 report Zvents Local Push is One to Watch), a company that supplies calendaring to many newspaper companies.
The audience target is “social capitalists,” educated and affluent users who “like to stay ahead of the curve and influence others in their peer groups”. Buchwald says that is who advertisers told him they want to reach through local media.
Its advertising sales approach is now supported by 14 people selling brand advertising across markets to national advertisers, while local sales forces will continue offering integrated broadcast and digital packages to advertisers in their respective regions. That approach, says Brian Buchwald, SVP of NBC Local Integrated Media, is “less is more.” The sites will offer fewer ad placements per page and more customized options. “We’re going with much cleaner, more impactful opportunities around [less] inventory,” he said. The new sites will feature just one ad unit along the right side of homepages and main section pages, focusing on rich media for that unit. Other focal points of the CPM-focused ad sells include:
- Multiple in-stream video advertising and display units;
- Providing sponsors with microsites for a more customized ad experience. One created for the Northern Illinois Energy Project, an initiative promoting the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, features video and links to the project’s web site and a retailer selling the environmentally-friendly bulbs.
NBC’s overall goal, expressed by NBC Local Media President John Wallace, “was to create a new type of use experience that’s less an extension of our TV stations and more of an online destination for the latest local news, information and entertainment….These sites are a departure from what we’ve done in the past and the next step in our mission to provide truly relevant local content to consumers on the media platform of their choice”. Buchwald said NBC expects the overhaul of its TV station sites, which have a combined audience of about 7 million, to drive significant traffic growth in 2009.
In addition, Fox Interactive Media announced that it, too, is beginning to revamp local websites. Working with digital publishing company Lin TV, FIM has launched two sites, for Rhode Island’s www.wpri.com and Mobile, Alabama-based www.fox10tv.com, with more in the works. The emphases: customized video players, weather map and social net tools.
Implications: Outsell has repeatedly noted the blurring of traditional print and broadcast businesses, as they move online. While newspaper companies made earlier and greater initial investments, broadcasters have been ramping up their businesses, seeing both the value of their video assets and the growing opportunity of locally oriented online ad revenue. Broadcasters, who’ve gotten less than 10% of those dollars in the US, while newspapers take in about 25%, now are rejigging their strategies, and taking more centralized control of their properties.
Outsell believes the new moves are further warning signs to news publishers that the competition for local dollars is only getting more complex — and demands greater innovation and faster time-to-market. The areas of competition are twofold: creation of innovative, useful and interactive local content, and the offering of contemporary ad products. Those ad products, like NBC’s, need to include rich media, and the selling programs need to be flexible ranging from CPMs to CPCs to CPAs.
In the last year, both Belo and Scripps have moved to reorganize their local assets. Belo has divided its TV and newspaper properties into two separate companies. Scripps has put its local TV and newspaper assets into one company and its cable and digital start-up properties in another. Such organization is one step in the process. The most important one for them and all local owners is to create the flexible, multimedia properties of the next decade — and keep one eye out for renewed competition.