Good evening, medical
Many, if not most of you, already know how to use DFP. You know how to set up advertisements to run for one day, for one week or for a whole month. That’s an awesome ability to have but I wanted to delve into this a little deeper to show you the benefits of scheduling some house ads for a shorter period than that.
That brings us to John’s Monday Tip of the Week.
The screenshot above shows the DFP screen where you set up the parameters for a specific ad campaign. This is where you set up the inventory size, the campaign name etc. It’s also where you set up the start and end dates for the campaign.
One of the coolest things you can do here is set up an ad to appear for a very limited time.
Our Newstalk station in New York has used this time setting before with some great results. That station often aired the Republican Debates and the debate coverage live so they set up the ad to only appear for the times when the debate or the after-coverage would be airing. That way, if a user went to the site during that specific period, they knew immediately that the debate was on LIVE.
The ad linked viewers directly to the audio player where they could listen live.
If we expand on this idea a little bit, this provides a really great opportunity for us. In fact, I’ve listed three examples below of how this ability can be used effectively BOTH from a publicity perspective and from a business one.
(The screenshot below shows the specific settings area where you would enter in the time you would want an ad to run and the specific days you would want it up).
1.) We have a lot of big political events coming up. There are the conventions, there are the debates, etc. For every major event that your station is covering, you can set up pop-up ads (800×360 is the perfect size for them) that you can post during those live events. If the prime-time coverage of the GOP convention begins at 8 PM on Tuesday, your ad can go live at 8 PM on Tuesday and say “Convention 2016: Click here now for live coverage.”) This follows the New York example and immediately tells website users that they need to tune in asap to receive the best coverage of these events.
2.) High-profile interviews: Salem has so much great on-air talent and our hosts are so well-known that they often interview some of the biggest stars in both political parties. We should take advantage of that. If you know that one of your hosts (whether that be a national host or a local one) will be speaking to a major guest, take advantage of that.
If you hear on Monday that Medved will be interviewing Paul Ryan on Wednesday from 5-6 PM, let me know. Our designer can help us create an ad to promote that interview so that if a user goes to the site during that hour, they immediately know that they need to tune in and listen live to hear what happens.
3.) Business Opportunities: This is the big financial opportunity I was thinking about. Imagine you have a new local host who wants to have a show on your station from 8-9 PM weekdays.
They want to be successful on your station. You want them to be successful on the station SO maybe as an added incentive for them to sign a contract, you tell them that a pop-up ad promoting their show will be on the website during their show’s airtime for the whole first week of the show.
If you do that, the show’s name won’t be just appearing in the On-Air Now box. It will be appearing in the pop-up ad that appears every time a listener goes to the site during the broadcast, maximizing the host’s opportunity to get their name out there. In DFP, you can set an ad to only appear for one specific hour every day during the week so there’s an easy way to make this happen.
It’s one of the cool advantages that DFP offers and it’s a really awesome feature to have. I definitely think it’s worth exploring.
If you have any questions about this setting, let me know and I’d be happy to help you take advantage of it.
This has been John’s Monday Tip of the Week.
Have an awesome week, y’all!
Best,
John
