Your Options for Advertising on a Local Affiliate TV Stations Website

If you need a local presence in order to get use of your website you should look at a few things first. You obviously know the importance of a website and you know that it can generate new and repeat business but where do you advertise it? Take a look at your local TV station that has a decent newscast. Visit their website and what do you see? You should see news! This is where the eyeballs are. People continually watch their local news and weather. Where should you be present? Let's look at a few options.

The news page should contain the local, regional and national news. Look at the advertisements that are already on there. Are there a lot or a few? You should also look at other stations in your market and compare their news pages and find one that updates their content frequently. If you are able to find a news page that has several news stories on it and by that evening there are fresh news stories and content on the page, I would strongly consider advertising on that site versus one that updates every once in a while.

The weather page is a big part of any TV stations website and contains vital information for many people who work outside. Golf courses, city landscapers, construction workers, soccer moms and coaches etc... The weather page would be a great place to be seen and allow users to click on your advertisement to visit your site.

Contests are a great way to be seen by the workforce in your community. I am sure you have no trouble imagining people in their cubicles working at their desk and drifting off to the local TV website to catch up on their news and weather. Then they find the contest page where they can sign up and win prizes. Let's say you own a restaurant and you would give away a free dinner for 2 every week. Ask the TV station for rates regarding promotions and see what type of clever concept they come up with. The promotion has to catch the viewer's attention on-air and to help translate the TV viewer to a web visit. This also helps in the numbers that visit the website and increases your impressions using both mediums.

The home page should be the mother of all TV website advertising opportunities. The home page is the most visited page on the stations site and usually carries a premium. I would suggest placing an advertisement on the home page "above the fold". The advertisement should be attractive and will click-through to your page. The most important thing to know here is this - you should have web traffic information available to you concerning your site. It should be able to tell you where your visitors come from, meaning that you can track your return on your investment!

Content ads are advertisements inside a paragraph of a news story. This is where you are able to place your business in the middle of an engaged audience. Your local TV stations web site should be averaging 100,000 page views for every 60 news stories which is an average of 2 news stories a day (most newsrooms produce 12 a day). Now most TV stations allow 4 or more ads to rotate within each spot. So, your business would be visible on every fourth click. This is where you would want to be if you're trying to reach a middle class income level.

Some TV station websites still offer pop up ads on their site. Most are getting away from this archaic opportunity and I recommend that you never advertise via pop ups.

Video advertisements are the most recommended because they are audio/visual and they leave an impression on the user. This is most common when there is a news story that has video and your advertisement would play before the news story. This is an excellent way to get a massive about of exposure since most viewers are watching the video of the news stories.

You have many options of advertising news stories; these are a few that can help get traffic to your site using a local TV stations website.