New tech gives newspaper advertisers access to sub-zipcode granularity

Newspapers have always touted their geographic reach as a prime benefit to advertisers. After all, readers of New York's Daily News, for example, are likely to actually live somewhere around New York, so advertisers with local products and services could count on them to provide blanket coverage to virtually everyone in the area, and few others. However, as these local papers have gotten bigger, ads have gotten more expensive, to the point where local advertisers find themselves wondering if there are lower-cost and more efficient ways of reaching even more local audiences -- those most likely to buy from them.

Up until now, local advertisers would have had to purchase ads from smaller papers or resort to purely out-of-home stuff to reach hyperlocal markets, but according to Advertising Age:

"Interpublic Group of Cos.-owned Newspaper Services of America has
developed an analytical tool to help clients -- which include Home
Depot, Sears, CVS and Bridgestone -- target consumers through a
narrower geographic lens than has been previously available.

"The tool lets big advertisers who formerly leaned on major newspapers
to blanket a metropolitan area focus more accurately on individual
neighborhoods in an attempt to zone in on the areas where its
most-desired customers reside through a combination of newspaper zoned
editions, preprint inserts, direct mail, shoppers and other
publications, NSA Media Chief Development Officer Craig Desens said in
an interview."

While the tool is primary designed to make advertising via newspaper more efficient and locally-targeted (and hence making it more competitive with alternative and OOH media), given the cumulative effect that targeted local advertising has, in reality an improvement to local print ads will likely improve the performance of related local ads in out-of-home environments, via mobile, and even on the Internet.

Tags: out-of-home advertising, OOH