NCAA March Madness Advertising - Guitar Hero and More

Mmmmmm, college basketball. If you can smell it in the air, it must be March.

I love March Madness, not only because my UConn Huskies are in the Final Four this year (woohoo!), but because any event that makes it acceptable for Bob Knight to toss a Guitar Hero drum kit at Metallica is OK in my book.

In other NCAA advertising news, TNS Media Intelligence released a report on March Madness advertising trends a few weeks ago. Here are the most interesting tidbits:

Tidbit #1: The post-season NCAA Tournament brings in more national TV ad revenue than the post-season playoffs for professional baseball, professional basketball or college football. Only the National Football League playoffs, which includes the Super Bowl, is more lucrative.

Tidbit #2: Among the major televised sporting championships, only the Super Bowl commands a higher advertising unit rate than the NCAA Men’s Basketball championship game. College hoops has higher unit ad pricing than the major college football bowl games; the NBA championship; and the MLB World Series.

Tidbit #3: March Madness has a core group of TV sponsors that invest heavily in the broadcasts year after year. On average, more than 80% of the tournament’s network TV ad revenue has come from returning advertisers, an above-average retention rate versus other top sporting events.

Read the full report for more insight.

(Courtesy of TNSMediaGroup.com)

Newspapers Need to Build Relationships with Advertising Agencies

Indeed, newspapers in this day and age need to be especially aware of how they cooperate with advertising agencies. As major dailies continue to stop printing or threaten to fold on what seems like a daily basis (as noted in my last post), it's time that these publications take a moment to realize the value of an agency and what it brings to the table.

The Arab Press Network recently published a report by the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project that touched on a number of key points in the relationships (or lack thereof) between agencies and publishers.

Besides obvious overpricing and lack of organization in advertising departments at large daily newspapers, there are a whole host of issues that daily newspapers need to address when working with advertising agencies.

This is not to say that every newspaper is incapable of working with agencies - there really are some amazing people out there who have bent over backwards to make a campaign work for a client. As someone who speaks with newspapers every single day, you come to find out quickly who has your clients' best interests in mind and who just wants to make a buck.

And on that note, if there's one thing that is always been an issue, it's trying to make the newspapers understand the importance of the agency commissionable rate. When newspapers don't offer discounts to agencies or are unwilling to negotiate, what they're really saying is "Even though you are doing the work and selling our product for us, we aren't going to cut you a break."

When, according to this study, 90% of major newspapers' display advertising revenue is funneled to them through agencies, it may be time to rethink how they are treating the agencies that continue to send them business, especially now when the papers are as desperate for revenue as ever:

In the United States, national newspapers receive 90 percent of display advertising revenue from agencies, while local newspapers receive about 10 percent. The rest is earned from in-house departments and selling advertising to local clients.

The benefits of building a better relationship with agencies include more advertising volume and share of the market, access to more potential clients, getting earlier information on upcoming campaigns, more information for building cross-platform deals, and access to more people in the agency.

For an industry that is trying to stay afloat, it's sure not trying hard enough in the right areas.


(Courtesy of APN, WAN, and SFN)

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Stops Print Edition - Now Online Only

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is one of the latest daily newspapers to stop its print publications and move to an online-only format.

There'd been speculation regarding this move for months now, however one of my contacts at another major daily newspaper owned by the Hearst Corporation confirmed it last week.

Another interesting fact - according to one of my contacts in the Seattle area (confirmed by the Times), the Seattle Times is going to be picking up the P-I subscribers, so those who currently advertise in both papers won't automatically lose that circulation.

So who's next?

Time Magazine lists ten "Endangered Newspapers" that are worth taking a look at. Here they are in order:

1. The Philadelphia Daily News
2. The Minneapolis Star Tribune
3. The Miami Herald
4. The Detroit News
5. The Boston Globe (One contact says June as a potential door-closing date, though another claims it’s all rumors…hmmmm)
6. The San Francisco Chronicle
7. The Chicago Sun-Times
8. The New York Daily News
9. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
10. The Cleveland Plain Dealer


There's also a lot of talk about major restructuring at the New York Times. If you have time (and we're talking at least an hour here), check out the Buzz Machine for a fascinating post, complete with comments and reader interactions on the Times dilemma.


(Courtesy of Cnn.com, SeattlePI.com, NPPA.org, FindingDulcinea.com, Hearst.com, SeattleTimesCompany.com, Time.com, NYTimes.com, and BuzzMachine.com)