Even among retailers that are reducing their online spending, 56% said they would spend less on paid search versus 24% that said they would cut their social media marketing budget.

Granted, most social media marketing budgets are still fairly small, but it’s interesting to note the shift in spending online.

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.

1) Cable companies and other ISP providers use dynamic IP addresses, so the IP address for cable broadband subscribers changes each time they launch their web browser. As a result, your unique visitor numbers will be over inflated.

2) Corporate networks are generally recognized as one IP address, no matter how many people are on the network. As a result, your unique visitor numbers will be under reported since there is no way to tell how many people are visiting from the same corporate IP address.

So what is a more accurate measure for tracking unique visitors? Adding a tracking cookie to your website. However, that is not even foolproof as many people change the setting on their browsers to avoid cookies.

At the end of the day, broadcast websites won’t be turned into successful web businesses by selling numbers like unique visitors or pages alone. It’s all about using those metrics to generate results for our clients.

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.

However, it’s a killer sales opportunity for broadcasters to convenience more of their clients to move their advertising budgets out of print and out it on-air an online.

If you have a client who still needs something convincing about the effectiveness of newspapers, check out these facts and stats form recent article on CNN.com:

• 120 newspapers have shut down since January 2008
• 21,000 newspaper jobs haven been lost since January 2008
• Newspaper advertising dropped 23% in 2008 from the previous year
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Boston Globe are losing $1 million a week
• Most experts believe there won’t be any 2-newspaper towns by the end of 2009
• San Francisco might become the first major city not to have a paper if the chronicle closes

Keep up with the latest newspaper closings and layoffs at Paper Cuts.

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.

1. Graph by Hourly. Advertisers can now see correlation between their TV ads and traffic increases to their website on an hourly basis.

2. Audience data reporting. Advertisers can monitor how well their TV ads reached specific demographics.

In this tight economy, I would imagine more and more advertisers are seeking new ways to determine the effectiveness of their TV ads. Google TV is definitely going to be one of those tools.

If you are unfamiliar with Google TV, check out this video demo.

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.

I would argue they do.

I think broadcasters like selling page views and impressions so much because they are more comfortable “selling by the numbers,” lets face it, so are most advertising agencies too.

Television is all about selling ratings and radio is about selling demos, but the web is about selling engagement and accountable results.

Here’s some problems with page views:

1. Many of the ads appearing near the bottom of a web page are never seen by consumers, so how in good faith can we charge advertisers for that?

2. Half the traffic of most broadcast websites is from out of market because broadcasters are so fixated on pumping up traffic by linking to sites like Drudge or Fark to pump up their numbers.

3. Page views are the primary instrument for selling display ads, yet these ads are extremely easy for consumers to avoid. The industry term is “banner blindness”. Display ads have the lowest click through rate (CTR) of almost all forms of online advertising.

What numbers do matter then?

1. Time Spent: It’s” an indication of how loyal and engaged your users are with your content. The industry average for a broadcast website is about 7 minutes. Most newspaper websites are well over 30 minutes.

2. Bounce Rate: This describes the percentage of visitors who left your site after visiting a single page. A high bounce rate (say over 50%) shows your content is not that relevant to consumers.

3. Percentage of Local Visitors: I’ve always said on the web, it’s important to sell the right numbers, not the most numbers. We should not attract traffic to our websites for the sake of traffic. We want to attract quality traffic that will help achieve our advertiser’s goals.

4. Client ROI: This is probably the most important metric to me and heck, it’s the only one your client’s care about. we need to use out internal web metrics to design proposals that impact our client’s measure for success. Clearly understanding what our client’s measure for success will also help set expectations and avoid confusion about why or why not their campaign was successful.

Selling web advertising has always been a double edge sword because it’s so darn accountable. It’s now just beginning to make TV and radio more accountable, so we all better get use to selling in this new way.

I think accountability is a great thing because it helps us understand how to adjust our client’s campaign to make it more successful. If we keep achieving our client’s goals, don’t you think they just might stick with us?

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.

Some highlights:

• Most small businesses advertising budgets will remain unchanged for the next year from 2008.
• A high percentage of small businesses indicated that would spend more on social networking than any other format, followed by e-mail and their own websites.
• Over a third of small businesses said they don’t use most online marketing opportunities including their own website and even e-mail. (I see an opportunity here!)
• Research shows that small business online marketing efforts will focus on lead generation.
• ROI is the primary method used for measuring the success of an online campaign.

So what does all this mean to your web sales efforts targeting small businesses?

1) Online messaging (display ads, video and e-mail) should focus on lead generation: coupons, special offers, capturing e-mails.

2) If your station has a large e-mail list of consumers, this is an valuable asset to pitch to small businesses. E-mail campaigns are great for lead generation and can help your clients add to their e-mail list.

3) Small businesses are interested in learning more about the marketing potential of social networks. You can build a local social network using Ning for FREE and integrate it into your existing website. This will help you and your clients learn more about social networks, as well as creating a local advertising opportunity your clients will find valuable.

Have a question or a sales idea you would like to share? E-mail info@localbroadcastsales.com.