Weekly notes 09/18-09/25

Interview with Ramonica Harton
Director, Sales and Programming
CNN Interactive
Media Pool

Highlights:

CNN.com has its own sales force, which is separate from Time Warner, and Turner Broadcasting. There are two types of advertorial opportunities: TV-Web integrated and online only.

The value of this proposition is very clear: getting to the audience through multiplatform approach is a dream come true for advertisers. Speaking of the B2B side of the value component of CNN.com’s business model…

With its adaptability and access to new platforms, essentially the Internet and its podcasting, video-on-demand, mobile services, interactive TV, CNN positions itself as a great catch for advertisers.

Greg D’Alba, the COO of CNN Ad Sales and Marketing, is quoted saying that “advertisers… believe in, and pay for, CNN’s ability to reach consumers in a number of ways with the same content.” (John M. Higgins, “D’Alba keeps fighting for CNN”, Broadcasting & Cable, October 17, 2005.)

As dot-com’s business model is ad revenue supported for the most part, the dollar numbers are of importance here. According to Broadcasting and Cable, domestic ad sales in 2005 were more than $400 million for CNN, Headline News and CNN.com.

With the explosion of pay-for-performance (PPP) search marketing in 2002-2003, CNN.com had its portion of the pie by joining partnerships with Overture, Yahoo! and Google. Also known as the pay-per-click (PPC) search is one of the streams of ad revenue for major online brands like CNN.com. The online ad dollars are being spent with PPC search engines and any content site can get a share of that by driving its users to these search results.

Overture and Google let advertisers to appear in search results as well as on partner Web sites. The companies generate revenue when users click the links. This is a revenue share model, as distribution partners get some percentage of it.

Overture is a very large pay-for-performance search engine that offers search listings in its extensive partner network on a pay-per-click basis. Minimum bid: $0.10. The partner network includes Yahoo!, Altavista, CNN.com, InfoSpace, MSN, NetZero, Juno, Sympatica, Dogpile, and many others. Overture claims advertiser receipt of over 170 million leads per month.

In the end, Overture get wider distribution, and CNN gets its ad dollars. According to CNET.com, financial analysts estimate that sales from paid search comprised between 20 percent and 24 percent of the nearly $7 billion generated by the online-advertising market in 2002. That compares with between 10 percent and 12 percent in 2001.

When Dell bought sponsorship of dot-com’s new product – the Exchange – the value of this deal was obvious for both sides. Dell’s desire to be associated with innovative technologies and groundbreaking content approach was in sync with CNN.com’s search for additional ad dollars from its long time customer.

The content product offered by CNN.com is appreciated by advertisers, as the breadth and depth of it allows specific targeting to achieve greater results, i.e. impressions, clicks and any other conversion metrics. Marriott buys ad space on the Travel section of the Web site, as there is the audience that is looking to travel.

To emphasize its value proposition, CNN.com sells ad spaces in special reports, which are sometimes produced for a specific advertiser. As in the case with Western Union sponsoring all hurricane related specials, Cingular Wireless was the sponsor of the “Your Digital World” special report. Not to mention that when CNN.com launched free video in June 2005, the ad-supported player was sponsored by Chase and GM. What’s a better way to get the oh so desired eyeballs?

CNN's digital ad inventory is essentially limitless and includes streaming video, wireless, podcasting, VOD, digital-only special features and high-profile page positions like CNN.com home page roadblocks. Each month, more than 24 million unique visitors to CNN.com access more than 32 million video streams and 3.2 million podcasts. More than 62 million monthly page views come via wireless or mobile devices.