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An overview of online advertising at TriCities.com
07.25.2008Posted by: Ben
Love it or hate it, TriCities.com is by far the most heavily trafficked website in our area, boasting over 200,000 unique visitors looking at over 2 million pages per month. If you want to take advantage of online advertising, this is one obvious option. Recently a representative from Media General and our local sales representative from the Bristol Herald Courier met with us to explain the options — and to let us know that through next Tuesday (July 29th) they are offering discounted rates to get some new business.There are a wide variety of "banner" options across the site. If you are interested in this kind of standard online advertising, contact us or a TriCities.com rep for plans. This article is meant to explain some of the more innovative products available.
Deal of the Day. One of their most compelling products gives you a prominent banner ad in the upper right-hand corner which displays across the entire site for an entire day. No rotations, just a fixed ad that will be seen around 75,000 times. For $600, you get 5 days of your choice. (Bear in mind that Christmastime spots are disappearing.)
Page Sponsorship. This is a way to narrow your market exposure by having a banner next to a specific section of the website. Your banner appears on the header of the content topic, such as weather, sports, classifieds, etc. Prices are around $500 per month.
Dynamic banner ads. Got a database? Cars, boats, property, whatever — if you have a database of products, you can actually display them inside a banner (vertical or horizontal). The items will scroll around inside the banner so any size database is usable. An innovative product that has some real potential, but also one of their most expensive.
Please note that we make zero commission from any ads that are purchased as a result of our recommendations.
We would love to say that you could sponsor a content-rich email that reaches potential customers, but this product seems to be a) broken and b) not for sale. Maybe in the future!
The website TriCities.com is known for being hard to use, slow to load, and covered with way too many ads — especially ads from outside the area. We concur. However, Media General knows about some of the problems and is listening to the feedback they receive from both advertisers and users. They are slowly making changes that represent marked improvements, and eventually things might be a lot friendlier. With new management locally at the helm, and higher-ups at Media General genuinely interested in what we all have to say, it's important that we all work together to bring publishers, businesses, and consumers together in the smartest, most realistic way possible.
I'm going to look into joining the newspaper's advisory panel, and if you have any feedback you'd like to send my way, I'm very glad to gather it up and present it when I can.
tricities.com
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