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08/25/2016

AdOhio matters to us; it should matter to you

Here are three ways you can help us grow revenue for all

Dennis Hetzel Executive DirectorBy Dennis Hetzel, Executive Director

We’re mirrors reflecting your challenges, especially at AdOhio, which is our for-profit affiliate that specializes in print and digital ad placement.

We’re having a tough year, and we need your support. The good thing about helping AdOhio is that it helps your bottom line as well.  So, here are three things you can do to help AdOhio (and yourself):

  1. When we call for rate quotes, please ensure we are getting your best available rate for the proposal and respond as promptly as possible.
  2. When it comes to fulfillment and order accuracy, treat us as you would any other important customer. We have had several unfortunate situations lately in which we lost or nearly lost accounts because newspapers didn’t follow insertion orders or didn’t run ads.
  3. If you are a network program participant, please schedule a session where we can talk to you or your sales reps about upselling.  If you aren’t a network participant, contact us about getting involved.

Allow me to explain in a bit more detail why this is so important.

When AdOhio is doing well, it’s a virtuous circle. First, it means we send more and bigger checks to our members, because most of AdOhio’s revenue is returned to members as advertising sales. AdOhio retains a commission from sales, which ideally covers AdOhio’s expenses with remaining dollars used to support our other three entities. For example, AdOhio’s revenue helps ONA keep dues as low as it can while supporting activities such as lobbying, training, conferences and our legal hotline. In good years, profits from AdOhio result in substantial donations to our Ohio Newspapers Foundation and Ohio Coalition for Open Government.

Even in bad years – like this one – many members receive more in ad revenue from AdOhio than they pay to ONA in dues. When I first arrived in 2010, I’d talk to some members who disagreed with paying us commission.  “Well,” they’d say, “most of this is business we’d get anyway.”  While that is true in some cases, as the years go by and print revenue in particular gets harder to find, those examples decrease. We believe that most of the business we send is business you wouldn’t have otherwise.

The math works, too. If you analyze your own cost of sales, the commission a newspaper pays to AdOhio nets more profit to the paper than if you sold it and did all the related work yourself.  It is cost-effective to let us do the placement, particularly with state and regional clients.

Our network advertising programs are somewhat different – perhaps not as important to you but critical to us. Newspapers and websites that participate are guaranteeing space in print and availability online to our advertisers.  You control where and when the ads run over a fixed period or number of impressions.  The advertisers understand that this simple, efficient program is why they are getting incredible rates. We have rebates to participating papers but keep most of the dollars. Meanwhile, newspapers that embrace the opportunity to upsell into the networks can add thousands of dollars, literally, in incremental revenue.  We’ve seen it happen.

So, with that in mind, let me get to the other purpose of this week’s column:  Publicly thanking a number of newspapers that have joined our network programs. This is a big deal for us, because it fills some holes in our geographic coverage and adds to the extraordinary reach we sell. 

So, we welcome these papers to our print network programs: the Ashtabula Star-Beacon, the Warren Tribune Chronicle, Warren’s related Town Crier publications, the Youngstown Vindicator and Gannett’s Media Network of Central Ohio papers in Bucyrus, Chillicothe, Coshocton, Fremont, Lancaster, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, Port Clinton and Zanesville.

Mitch Colton, our network sales manager, will talk to any network member to provide more information on how to successfully upsell and identify the best targets.  Just selling one 2x4 ad into the network allows you to keep about $1,000. If you sold two per month, that’s $24,000 in new dollars. You can take it to clients you already have or use the network as leverage to close a deal. That’s another virtuous circle. To reach Mitch: 614-486-6677 or mcolton@adohio.net .

Thanks for listening. As it was so well put in the film “Jerry Maguire,” help us help you.

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