Everyone Can Be A Radio Advertiser

Comments (Archived):

1. SpotRunner for radio?

   1. Sort of. But more like ad.com for streaming audioSpotrunner didn’t turn out so well

2. Why is it asking for a credit card before I can learn what the system can do for me?

   1. You can take a tour here: http://www.targetspot.com/h…

   2. Good question. What kinds of things would you want to know before giving your credit card

      1. I too found the site a bit demanding of purchase before I was able to learn. Some of my questions:Define local: Major City? Rural America? How narrow can I target my audience?The tour is a good start (but not obvious from the home page.)If the goal is thousands of $200-$400 sampling accounts, the process should be more engaging. Also, some type of “no-risk” anxiety offer should be made. (If you don’t like your ad, we’ll refund your money before the campaign starts…)I used to own radio stations in Southern Minnesota, and still have a passion for audio advertising. This looks like a great idea – would love to hear it in action.

         1. Michael,Thank you for your comment,I think yo do have a point here,This is why we will add additional explanation/info and even may be short movie before our packages page.Daniel RazumovSelf Service, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

   3. We make our best effort to communicate what our system will do for you, both before you get to the final payment stage as well as on our web site (e.g. as the link provided by another commentator below).If you would like to learn more in advance then you are most welcome to contact our support team and they will be delighted to answer all your questions: http://www.targetspot.com/home/support_contact….I hope you find our service valuable. Please share your experience with us.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

3. I love API’s into the “real world”.

4. Fred, I can’t seem to find the link to your voice ad for this blog, or is it not out yet?

5. I haven’t gone deep into it Fred – but I was wondering – does Targetspot have a national or local sales force – or are you trying to keep it to the self serve model? One lessor we learned from dMarc Broadcasting was that radio stations think they have some secret sauce and hate yielding up inventory – so although you have some great broadcasters (CBS, Entercom etc…) can you get specific stations or networks – or do you have to buy across the network? Also wondering what sort of reporting you get when your spot runs? That has been a very big weakness in traditional radio.

   1. great questions harry — would love to hear more on that front, too.

   2. Targetspot has a large salesforce that sells to national and regional brands. They have sales offices in NY, Chicago, LA, and I think Dallas too. Self serve is a small but growing part of the business. You get a ton of analytics on your campaigns. Its like google analytics for radio campaigns

   3. Harry,we offer both. We have a national sales force in key markets (e.g. NY, Chicago, L.A., Dallas…) who provide full service to large national brands, running large national and regional campaigns. And we have a self service platform which allows any local advertiser to instantly get going running small local radio campaigns online (we take care of the ad creation seamlessly). So whatever advertiser type you are, small or large, self serving or service driven, new or experienced – we have the right solution for you.Our networks reaches 41 million unique users/month, and include both many radio groups (CBS, Entercom, Cox, Emmis, etc.) as well as many Internet pure play properties (MySpace Music, Live365, etc.). We do not sell properties on a one-off basis, rather we add value by selling real-time targeting, automatically parceling our large network to reach the desired demographics and location across all properties.We have real time reporting (impression delivery, click through on sync-ed companion banners, etc.). We also provide analytics, such as measurement of traffic uplift from campaign to destination web site (post impressions), and support all major 3rd party analytics such as DART and Atlas.Check us out.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

      1. Thanks Eyal and Fred – appreciate the comments. I would love to have a deeper conversation about the business if you would be willing.

         1. Harry, thanks for your interest. Drop me a line here: [email protected], Eyal

6. I think think Targetspot sounds like a very good idea. There are many micro businesses that use adsense as their only means of advertising. Other advertising forms are a little too complicated and too expensive. This really opens up another world for the little guy.

   1. That is exactly our view of online advertising offerings currently available to small advertisers.Small businesses have a real need to break through the clutter and get their message out to their local audience. Online advertising has seen lots of growth in search, banners, video, and other display-oriented media formats. But, the massive potential of local radio advertising has been conspicuously missing online, and we are now filling this gap.We view online audio advertising as more than just an additional advertising format. The emotional impact and richness of audio messaging allows a small business to “cut through the clutter” of commercial messaging and communicate with consumers at a very emotional level. The result is enhanced message retention and drive to purchase.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

7. Hey that might be the perfect way to begin marketing garagedollar. I had delayed marketing* a couple of weeks until the map api stuff was cleanly integrated (that means I have to learn it!) but additional channels is always a plus.Bookmarking them.* note, where’s the best place to market to yard sale hosters/explorers? I was thinking yankee trader (local magazine) and an ad on craigslist. Google Adwords could work too.

   1. Hey Mark – I visited the site last week, garage sales aren’t really my deal but I love the simplicity of the idea. Keep it up! Did you build this from scratch with no coding experience (you mention learning the map apis) or did you already have the coding experience and just built out the idea? In any case, it looks great.

      1. I just had an idea. Tyler hacked out the service. We’re not uber yard sale experts either.I’m still catching up on sinatra/datamapper…The idea is of course one I wish to extend to an event specific platform where individuals can market their own variants live music, tech meetups, bacon cookoffs…

         1. The idea is of course one I wish to extend to an event specific platform where individuals can market their own variants live music, tech meetups, bacon cookoffs… – Yes, I totally agree. When I looked at it I saw the instant appeal to advertising tech repair services. Especially if the people getting the notifications are people who have a need of the specific service or an interest in the specific topic. I look forward to following the evolution of it.

   2. Hey Mark,Is there a way you could target ads to sites like Free Cycle in addition to Craig’s List?Also, there might be a way to broaden this idea out a little if you’re ambitious about it. There are a lot of people who live in apartments and can’t hold garage or yard sales. There’s also a lot of people who find these sales to be a pain in the neck and find it easier to just throw stuff out, which isn’t an optimal solution for them, the environment, or people looking for cheap stuff.But there is also a minority of people who like holding garage sales/yard sales/estate sales. What if you could connect them with folks who just want to get rid of stuff, and get a little vigorish for making the connections and advertising?

      1. There’s also a lot of people who find these sales to be a pain in the neck and find it easier to just throw stuff out, which isn’t an optimal solution for them, the environment, or people looking for cheap stuff. That’s me. I’d totally be interested in something like this.

      2. He needs to get those people first with a longer time table- and then get user sign up.. If there is nothing to be had on the list, why sign up? of course, if it is a random email/txt who cares?

   3. Mark, it’s time to Pivot- and add an email list. I was talking to a woman the other day. her cousing? Sister? owns the jewelry store she was working in- they sell vintage and new stuff- and they get a lot at garage sales. There is a huge market for this.I know you love statuses- This, has so much potential to be so so much huger.Most people on long island seem to garage sale at random in the spring, summer, and fall, primarily in the summer before school (moving/cleaning out)I would also add in the Brooklyn Flea and there is a huge flea style market in CT from what I have been told.

      1. Let’s discuss the pivot, how big of a reinvention are you thinking? Or are you suggesting more of a marketing path? I see nothing we’re working on with more potential, I’m glad it’s vibing well with a diverse feedback group. Luckily I have a yard sale specialist that I work with at my day job who’s a great resource (brilliant dude Julian).

   4. Online audio advertising is especially well suited for local advertising and getting people in your area aware of your service!Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

8. Very good market opportunity here I think. Radio and local go together nicely.I am starting to wonder how much pure blog PR value via avc.com there is, in getting funded by USV :D.

9. I assume this is a US based service?

   1. Yes, we are currently focused on the US market.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

      1. Eyal, great stuff.If you bring transparency to radio ad pricing, that would really be something. My problem with radio is that the startup costs are so high and that radio sales exec’s always try to sell the less attractive inventory to the one-off account.Curious, do your station partners give you access to all of their add inventory, or just a portion of it?

         1. George,Indeed, one major advantage of our new self service platform is that you can get going with as little as $200… there are no practical “strat up” costs and the program is suited for ANY budget level.Yes, we generally get access to our partners’ full inventory mix.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

10. Advertising makes the world go around. Not sure if it’s a good thing.

11. If they want to do tv, let me know!

    1. Do you work with BloombergTV as well?

       1. Yep. And we bring to the table like 600+ local producers who will shoot spots for a couple hundred bucks. We exist almost entirely for brands / sites that want to integrate TV sales into their own offering – where they need customization at the “cable zone level” – which is sub-dma (zip code based).

          1. I have a friend at Bloomberg in NY, getting married soon-(like august soon) the best gift I could give him to be honest is some sort of positive change at Bloomberg..hmmm

12. Superb implementation.This is another proof that there is a new trend toward self-service advertising with the most notable example being that $200mm juggernaut called Facebook Ads.I’ve got a vested interest in this trend and it makes really happy to see what TargetSpot has done.

13. Fred do you have a link to your actual spot? Would love to hear the copy.It actually throws me a little conceptually — although in an intriguing way — linking a blog where we’ve been all getting to know each other textually — but have overwhelming never heard each others’ voices.If your ad included voice testimonials from Trollers it would blow my mind — I don’t know what we each sound like!

14. So I guess a comment by you on advertising AVC is as close as you will get to my following comment…When I first started reading AVC it was because I was interested in learning about the venture capital industry. For that purpose it is a great blog and I thank you for sharing some of the intimate details of your successes and trails and tribulations.What is so interesting to me is that while you have a great deal of focus (good stuff!) on the VC industry and technology (internet) you also intertwine so many life lessons into your everyday (every other day) posts. It is for this reason that i now find myself most interested in what it is you are thinking about at any given time.Great BLOG! thanks….

15. I did a blog post a few years back about Google and dMarc (the radio ad system they bought and eventually abandoned).http://sisyph.us/technology…I have a real question about how well a self serve ad model can work with cpm ads. Radio ads are sold. It’s very much a process about convincing an advertiser about mutual brand synergies. It’s an process based on emotional appeal not intellectual appeal.If you’ve got a CPC audio ad model then it is a different story. Then you’re making a buying choice based on data not emotion.

    1. Erik,Thanks for this comment, happy to address.There is a key difference between traditional radio and online audio advertising. We capture that same “emotional” impact (of the end consumer hearing the ad), which makes the messaging more impactful and drives purchase; but elevate the medium to an online format in which performance tracking (e.g. through our real-time click through reporting, or impression traffick uplift analytics) provides accountability and insight.There are two types of advertisers – brand advertisers and performance advertisers. The former need CPM pricing as they look for branding (frequency and reach) and the latter could use either CPM or CPC, as long as they have visibility into performance (it’s all equivalent eCPMs at the end of the day).We simply provide simplicity in structure, along with visibility and accountability.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

16. Does a $2.50-$4 CPM seem pricey to anyone else?How does this compare with regular radio? How does this compare to video pre-roll ads the user is pretty much forced to watch?

    1. The rates are generally similar or lower than equivalent radio rates (measured by a metric called GRP), while you get all the benefits of radio but also the unique benefits of online advertising on top (accurate targeting, guaranteed exact impression delivery, real time reporting, analytics).Video pre-roll market rates are much higher (we sell them too and it is indeed a different product).Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

17. Great stuff, Fred. Hope all is well – it’s been awhile. Of course, us at ADstruc love what Targetspot is doing for the industry. We make it easier for everyone to get involved in outdoor advertising through our online buying platform. We are graduating TechStars Boulder in August – look forward to seeing you on the 5th!

18. I still hold by my critique about music and music listening and the person behind the computer.

19. Is this service available in Canada? If not, any plans to expand? And how do you come up with your numbers for amount of people listening?

20. Just one more thing about free voice ads,Please feel free to visit our voice talents list to start easily your Radio Advertising Campaign with us: http://www.voices.com/targe…Daniel RazumovSelf Service, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com

21. Wow – this is so cool – I never thought to advertise a blog!Makes perfect sense – will look into it.http://thefashiondict8tor.com/

22. I hope you will find our service of great value.Please share your experiences with us.Eyal GoldwergerCEO, TargetSpotwww.targetspot.com