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How the Austin American-Statesman Automatically Generated $100k Using the OwnLocal Platform
The Austin American-Statesman, based in Austin, TX, is part of the Cox Media Group. They have a daily circulation of 100,000+ and serve over 1 million uniques per month on Statesman.com and Austin360.com.
The challenges the Statesman faces are really the challenges of the industry. They still rely on print for the majority of their revenue, but at the same time know that digital is where they need to be.
For years they tried to bring their print customers into the digital space, but that proved difficult to do. There is different creative to run, different technology to use, and it’s a completely different sale.
“Most newspapers are trying to manage two types of businesses: print, which is really managing the decline, and digital which is managing the growth,” said Scott Pompe, VP of Advertising at the Statesman, “However we know we need to focus on both; that’s where OwnLocal comes in.”
OwnLocal uses technology to automate the digital sales process to newspapers’ small business advertisers. The OwnLocal platform extracts valuable content from print advertisements and turns them into sophisticated digital marketing campaigns based around SEO. This turns every print advertiser into a tiny digital customer, generating thousands of dollars in new recurring revenue for the newspaper every month and providing a gateway to upsell those customers into larger digital packages.
“OwnLocal’s helped us bring the print world into the digital world in a way that we haven’t been able to do on our own,” said Patrick Acton, Digital Sales Director for Cox Media. “The web optimization of print ads, at scale, everyday, in such a simple way is a great tool for our advertisers and a new revenue source for us.”
“Optimizing print ads is a natural fit for advertisers, especially because many of them already have a search strategy. Incorporating their current strategy into their print advertising is a no-brainer,” said Pompe.
Partnering with OwnLocal allowed the Statesman to bundle search engine optimization with their existing print packages, recapturing the advertising dollars local businesses were spending on their own search strategy.
Steve Dorsey, VP of Innovation and Planning, said, “For us, OwnLocal has been great. They’re helping us make more revenue from the work we already do and the sales we already made.”
The Statesman handled the OwnLocal integration as a simple rate increase. They sent out the letter with 60 days notice explaining to their clients they would receive digital services with their print packages.
“We got ~8% push back at first, but after a small conversation, 90% of those clients understood the value of what we were doing. To me, the greatest result is it’s easy money. It’s not a difficult sales and it has given us a way to upsell our print advertisements in a meaningful way to our clients,” said Pompe. “We’re doing roughly $9,000 per month in our market. If I were to do it all over again the only thing I would have done differently is charged more for the service.
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