Minneapolis, MINN (PRWEB) September 20, 2006
In honor of its recently announced 10-year anniversary, Internet Broadcasting today cited 10 innovations that have made the company the #1 publisher of local news online with a national network of 79 TV station sites.
Drawing 13 million monthly visitors, the Internet Broadcasting network is comprised of TV station sites representing America’s premier broadcasters, including NBC, Cox Television, Hearst-Argyle, The McGraw Hill Companies, Post-Newsweek, Meredith Broadcasting, and Scripps Howard. Internet Broadcasting excels at delivering online news, offering converged TV/web advertising, and producing profitable TV station Web sites.
“Innovation is the cornerstone of our company,” said Reid Johnson, founder, CEO, and president of Internet Broadcasting. “As TV broadcasters who know the web, we’ve had a decade of experience in understanding what works and what doesn’t. It’s this head-start that keeps us at the forefront of where news goes next.”
Top 10 Company Innovations
10. Unique TV/Web Convergence Advertising
Marketing brands across Internet Broadcasting’s national network is not limited to the online world as one might suspect. Rather, advertisers can tap powerful TV/web convergence possibilities through Internet Broadcasting’s unique relationships with its TV station partners. At the push of a button, a singular brand can be marketed across two integrated platforms, using the TV to drive awareness of a product, and the web – where time and space are endless -- to complete the message.
This TV/web convergence adds the halo of local celebrities. With Internet Broadcasting, advertisers can tap recognized TV personalities to be the messenger under the banner of the trusted, local powerhouse news brands. This association with the TV station is priceless, producing a halo effect around the advertiser’s brand.
An Internet Broadcasting study, conducted by Heinrich Marketing Research (May, 2006), found that visitors are 2 ½ times more likely to perceive ads on Internet Broadcasting’s sites as “extremely high quality” versus ads on national news sites and portals. Furthermore, 80 percent said Internet Broadcasting’s ads were “more relevant” because of the tie to the local TV station.
9. Integrated Custom Sponsorships
With Internet Broadcasting, advertisers get much more than the standard IAB ad unit or basic rich media placements. They get custom advertising programs, and in many cases, this comes in the form of integrated sponsorships. Internet Broadcasting can either place an advertiser near existing content they want to be associated with or create original content, such as articles, tips, contests, and video vignettes to create a custom, contextually relevant environment.
For example, a packaged good advertiser who wants to be associated with food content can leverage Internet Broadcasting’s Food vertical. Additionally, the advertiser can receive a Custom Content Channel complete with sight, sound, and motion, for 100 percent share of voice, creating top-of-mind awareness in a contextually relevant way.
8. The Push Button Ad Buy
Reaching consumers on a local level is usually time-consuming and inefficient, requiring media buyers to go through individual web publishers one by one. With Internet Broadcasting, advertisers can not only reach up to 79 different Web sites in 61 different markets, but also buy both online advertising and TV spots all in one buy – that’s the push button buy.
If an advertiser wants to reach a national audience in a locally relevant way, make a regional buy, or target individual markets, Internet Broadcasting can make it happen with sites in each of the top 25 markets, and 45 of top 50.
7. Breaking News Delivery
With breaking news, getting important information to the public is the highest priority. With a unique process and proprietary technology, Internet Broadcasting can deliver news fast. Because Internet Broadcasting’s 150 dedicated, local online editors are in the newsroom working side by side with TV broadcasters, they hear of breaking news when it happens. A national news team at the company’s Minneapolis headquarters constantly monitors news wire feeds and sources stories on a national level.
These editors can publish breaking stories to the sites and send a breaking news e-mail alert virtually simultaneously, in real time. When a story of national prominence breaks, Internet Broadcasting’s national editorial team in Minneapolis sends breaking news alerts on behalf of each station in the network. An advance notice system allows local editors to opt out of these national alerts should they so choose.
Breaking news alerts are delivered to the in-boxes of hundreds of thousands of subscribers instantly, thanks to Internet Broadcasting’s proprietary e-mail server. Built for speed, the server sends up to 80,000 e-mails a second across the network’s 79 sites. Additionally, since Internet Broadcasting staffs its national desk 24/7, they can cover any local breaking news event that occurs overnight by posting stories or sending out alerts on behalf of the local station, providing continuous online coverage.
6. Customized Content Management
Internet Broadcasting Web sites consistently beat competitors when it comes to continuously updated stories and depth of content. The reason for this advantage is a customized, proprietary content management system called “Phaedra.” Internet Broadcasting built Phaedra for the sole purpose of publishing content for a network of TV station Web sites.
Phaedra gives the company’s editors one system to work with and manage workflow. Editors can easily write stories, add photos, videos, and slideshows and even customize page layouts all in one uniform system. When writing a story, Phaedra allows for clear status designations as a story moves from a draft, through copy editing, to being ready for publishing. This allows stories to zip through the editing process for fast, real-time publishing, while ensuring nothing goes “live” until it’s ready.
Phaedra helps sites stay fresh and rich even when local news is slow. Editors get direct access to stories created by the national news desk or partner stations around the country, such as when a local story reaches national prominence.
5. Robust Site Analytics
The beauty of the web is instant feedback. Internet Broadcasting, with its partner WebTrends, has developed an innovative approach to web analytics by providing its broadcast partners with instant feedback on site traffic and visitor behavior. By customizing WebTrends’ web analytics solution, data is available on an individual site basis, overall partner basis and on a network-wide basis.
Aside from traffic information, the company, its partners, and stations can examine detailed visitor behavior. For instance, they can see what search terms are driving people to the sites, how many people are reading a particular story, the most popular content sections and affinities between content sections. This gives Internet Broadcasting’s online editors accurate insight into its visitors so they can best write content – including adding, removing, and updating stories – to meet visitor needs. Rich metrics also help the company prove and improve effectiveness for their advertisers. Furthermore, Internet Broadcasting can benchmark each of its sites against one another, serving as an invaluable apples-to-apples barometer and aid in the development of best practices.
4. Nationally Syndicated Original Content
In addition to offering syndicated content from third parties to its partners, Internet Broadcasting leverages its national content team to create original and exclusive content on a daily basis. The team develops lifestyle stories, interactive tools, videos, and slideshows for use across the network on topics such as money, health, family, home and “free time.”
For consumers, more content means a richer experience. For Internet Broadcasting, this means a “stickier” visit (how long a user stays on a site). With more page views per visit and different categories of content, advertisers can better target their chosen audience and associate their brands with different content types for a contextually relevant message.
3. Making TV Station Sites Profitable
Internet Broadcasting brings dollars to local TV station Web sites. This comes from sharing national advertising revenue, which Internet Broadcasting receives by selling ads across its entire network, regionally, or on a market-by-market basis. In addition, Internet Broadcasting has regional sales directors who work with individual station sales staffs to help them sell online advertising. These regional sales directors provide web sales expertise to help develop product, packaging, and sponsorship ideas.
For the last four years, all of Internet Broadcasting’s sites have been profitable. While many TV stations are experimenting and trying to get off the ground economically, Internet Broadcasting is delivering real profit for the company’s TV partners. In the case of several partners, they are experiencing a six to seven figure addition to their bottom line. The revenue from the site, depending on the partner, represents 2-4 percent of their overall revenue.
2. Technology That Delivers
When big news breaks, people flock to news Web sites -- especially at work -- as the web is the best and sometimes only available source of information. Traffic spikes can give online news outlets technical difficulties making sites extremely slow or even unavailable. Keeping a site robust and operational when traffic spikes occur is not trivial. Internet Broadcasting’s technology infrastructure, however, is designed as a systems and content distribution network to scale without any hiccups.
The online publisher’s unique ability to stay up-and-running during high traffic events has been tested over and over with huge volume spikes occurring on a local level almost daily. On September 11, 2001, Internet Broadcasting’s network provided uninterrupted, constantly updated local coverage all day long, despite an overwhelming demand that crippled other online news outlets. During Hurricane Katrina, Internet Broadcasting’s New Orleans site, WDSU.com, saw a 20-times increase in traffic with nearly 4 million visits a day and served over 500,000 live video streams with 99.97 percent site availability. This allowed the station to continue coverage despite horrific conditions.
1. Our People – TV Broadcasters Who Know the Web
Internet Broadcasting and its people have been described as TV broadcasters who know the web. The management team has a 10-year head start on their peers in the industry who just now are trying to figure it out. Understanding the newsroom, the broadcast industry and the needs of local news advertisers is second nature.
The crown jewel of Internet Broadcasting is its online news editors, referred to as “Swiss Army” journalists. Not only do they write stories for the web and constantly update them, but also write headlines and captions, source and post video and images and create relevant slideshows. They may even appear on-air from time to time. They represent a new era in journalism and are driven to achieve excellence.
Their efforts are recognized by countless journalism awards, including Sigma Delta Chi’s and the National Press Club’s inaugural awards for Online Journalism, and a National Edward R. Murrow Award. Their work draws 13 million monthly visitors, ranking Internet Broadcasting as the number one publisher of local news online and the third largest online news publisher overall. Finally, Internet Broadcasting sites are number one in 35 markets, and in many markets including Philadelphia, Boston, and Atlanta, have more visitors than all the other TV station Web sites combined.
Company Receives Industry Praise
“We congratulate Internet Broadcasting on your 10-year anniversary! We wish you continued success and look forward to working with you to reach local movers through your trusted broadcast TV stations and affiliated news Web sites.”
“Internet Broadcasting is a very important partner to Bankrate. In a digital world where television and the Internet are quickly converging, Internet Broadcasting is a company on the leading edge. We congratulate Internet Broadcasting on 10 successful years in business. We look forward to a long continued relationship.”
“Internet Broadcasting is a valuable partner for us at AutoTrader.com. They help us reach critical local audiences with our brand and connect in-market car shoppers to our site. We congratulate them on 10 great years and look forward to our continued partnership.”
“Congratulations to Internet Broadcasting on the occasion of your 10th anniversary. Over the past two years, our relationship with your organization has helped Monster grow our business by providing an effective means to reach job seekers and employers across the nation with locally targeted messages.”
“The Internet Broadcasting network has provided quality leads and valuable distribution to our pay-for-performance advertisers for over three years. We look forward to working with you well into the future. Happy 10th anniversary!”
About Internet Broadcasting
Internet Broadcasting is the largest national publisher of TV station Web sites. The company publishes 79 sites for America’s premier broadcasters: NBC, Cox Television, Hearst-Argyle, The McGraw Hill Companies, Post-Newsweek, Meredith Broadcasting, Scripps Howard, and Capitol Broadcasting Company. Each month, one in every 12 online Americans visits an Internet Broadcasting site, making it one of the nation’s largest online news publishers. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. For more information, visit http://www.ibsys.com.
Media Contacts:
Kevin Abramson, 651-365-4221
Anthony Giombetti, 612-605-8310
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