The broadcast TV advertising trade group has overhauled its TVB.org to be more accessible and informative to "its customers" — media buyers. But the members section for broadcasters has been beefed up, too, with category overviews and briefs that can be printed out and taken on the next sales call.
TVB Revamps Website To Match New Focus
Last month, at its annual conference, TVB unveiled its advertiser-focused strategy along with a new logo and a new handle (it’s just TVB now, not the Television Bureau of Advertising).
Since Tuesday, that new direction has been reflected in an all-new website with a whole new emphasis. Rather than a site for broadcasters with a section for media buyers, it’s now a site for media buyers with a section forf broadcasters.
“We want to be talking to our customers,” says EVP and CMO Abby Auerbach, summarizing the thinking behind the site design, the new content and the reorganization of the old content.
The information and stats are easy for buyers to access, she says. “They’re no long hidden behind a password or buried deep within the navigation.”
The new emphasis is immediately apparent to anybody clicking on to the home page. Right beneath the main navigation bar are pictures and graphics making the pitch for TV in general and spot TV in particular.
Carrie Hart, VP, marketing and research, who is charged with site development and maintenance, calls it a “visual articulation of the value proposition” of spot TV. “We wanted that to be front and center.”
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The front-and-center space is dynamic, she says. It may later be used for video clips, testimonials and other material, but all will be aimed at selling spot to all comers.
The lower two-thirds of the home page are given to TVB news and regularly updated industry news aggregated from other sites.
The site, which retains the same URL (TVB.org), was built by Raven Creative of Chapel Hill, N.C. In addition to the content changes, the site also features some functional upgrades, including RSS, mobile and easier-to-use registration and password system for members.
“We wanted to take the friction out of the station experience,” says Auerbach.
Quickly accessible through the top navigation bar on the public site is a database of TV stations, TV groups and TV markets (DMAs).
The DMA listings include all full-power stations along with short cultural and economic profiles of the markets. The underlying message is that each market has “unique qualities” and that the best way for media buyers to reach them is through local TV, says Hart.
Each station listing includes contact information, network affiliation, national rep and any ancillary multicast channels it may be offering. The multicast channels are identified using the Nielsen naming convention.
Sections of the various ad opportunities stations offer; planning and buying spots; and ratings charts and basic TV facts and figures round out the public, buyer-oriented section.
The member section of the site, now reached through a single link on the home page and still behind a password wall, has been enriched with some new content, too.
There’s an overview for major advertising categories like automotive and retail. The overviews are intended primarily a primer on the categories that stations can use to train new account executives.
The overviews are substantive. The automotive one runs 26 pages.
In addition, the site offers “category briefs,” where key facts about entire sectors such as auto insurance are reduced to a few pages. Available as PDFs, they can be printed out and incorporated by account executives into their sales presentations.
At launch, the site carries no advertising. But that’s only because TVB wants to keep things simple and the site uncluttered in its early going. Advertising in the form of banners may begin showing up in January, Auerbach says.
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