A national periodical chain, which we call “PeriodiCo” for this case study*, partnered with Locality to boost digital video ad sales. This partnership enables advertisers to combine local print ads in PeriodiCo’s city newspapers with targeted video ads streamed to digital devices. Through Locality’s Channel Partnerships, PeriodiCo accesses ad inventory from over 150 premium over-the-top (OTT) content publishers. Locality’s streaming ad sales enablement efforts have been vital to the partnership’s success.
Despite PeriodiCo’s experience in digital advertising on its news websites, the company saw potential in offering a broader video ad inventory with Locality. Since launching in 2022, the partnership allows PeriodiCo’s clients to advertise on both short-form videos and full episodes of the top entertainment, news, and sports served via apps and streaming services to TVs and digital devices. Locality’s adtech lets advertisers target a single designated market area (DMA), particular zip codes, or even individual households. Our streaming ad sales enablement team helped gear up the news company to grow this revenue stream.
Streaming Ad Sales Enablement Provides Hands-On Training
Selling streaming video inventory at this scale was new for PeriodiCo, as it is for many of our private-label partners. Typical partners include TV broadcasters, cinemas, radio stations, and various other ad sellers. That’s where our sales enablement team steps in.
During 2023, Locality’s sales enablement team offered a series of two-day boot camps and information sessions at the locations of three of PeriodiCo’s city newspapers. Each newspaper is located in one of the top 30 U.S. media markets. We customized these two-day sessions for PeriodiCo’s local account executives (AEs) and local advertising customers interested in learning more about OTT video advertising.
At Locality, we see ourselves as your media company’s consultant and partner. Therefore, we take a hands-on approach with your staff and customers. Our engagement with PeriodiCo is typical of this approach.
At each location, the two-day sales enablement boot camp began with a half-day course to provide an advanced understanding of OTT, its technical capabilities, and strategies for selling it. This in-person training builds upon the introductory modules we offer all of our partners online through our self-directed OTT Academy courses. John DeVan, a sales enablement expert with Locality, explained the intent behind the in-person program.
“These are print-based salespeople. So, we were training them, ramping them up on the basics, and clarifying some misconceptions about OTT,” DeVan said. “We cover the technology and business side of OTT: Here’s how it works. Here’s how it would benefit your current ad clients or prospects. And then here’s how you would go out and sell it using PeriodiCo’s customized value propositions and brand pillars.”
Locality Offers Direct-to-Publisher Advertising Relationships
One highlight of the nuts and bolts of Locality’s OTT offering is explaining the benefits of our direct-to-publisher relationships for all full-episode player (FEP) streaming content. Such relationships cut out the middlemen and allow first-look access to inventory before other sales channels. Locality’s direct-to-publisher approach lets us guarantee that ad campaigns will be delivered in full to the target audiences. Targeting can include demographic parameters such as age or income groups or customer behavior profiles like “auto intenders” and “quick service restaurant frequenters.”
Meanwhile, ad fraud has become a major problem in some online advertising, where click farms and robots generate fake ad impressions that are costly and ineffective for advertisers. Locality’s unique technology and direct-to-publisher relationships allow us to guarantee that our ad metrics are free of fraudulent impressions. We highlighted these capabilities in our training with AEs, but also in our later sessions with PeriodiCo’s advertisers.
We Help Your Customers Get Comfortable with OTT
After training PeriodiCo’s ad executives in the mornings, we spent the afternoons strategizing how to sell OTT advertising to each newspaper’s major advertising clients. Then, we put those efforts into practice on the second day of the boot camps when Locality and PeriodiCo invited the advertisers to an OTT seminar of their own. Those seminars might include a morning group session with 30 to 50 regular advertisers in the local PeriodiCo newspaper. Meanwhile, we typically schedule the afternoon as one-on-one sales meetings with top advertisers.
At each newspaper, PeriodiCo invited a range of potential streaming advertisers to attend. The group included local retailers, home maintenance companies, local law firms, and regional performing arts centers, among others. When Locality meets with advertisers, we make it clear that our channel partner, in this case, PeriodiCo, is their vendor. Locality is merely there to provide no-pressure expertise.
“I’m not here to sell you. I’m here to be a knowledge point and a resource,” DeVan explained to the advertisers.
However, our support for both PeriodiCo and its advertisers continues long after the boot camp is over. DeVan and other sales enablement experts continue to work with the newspaper company to close deals with advertisers and to help them strategize their ad campaigns.
“That particular local newspaper would be responsible for getting an agreement with the advertiser and ordering a streaming ad campaign on our OTT Dashboard,” DeVan explained. “Once the client is in the pipeline, my team and I work with them to identify the best-targeting strategy and content selection. Should they be doing more short-form or full-episode player content? Should they be targeting an entire DMA or maybe they just want to target these few zip codes?”
Sales Boot Camp Leads to Increased OTT Orders
Our partnered sales enablement approach has helped PeriodiCo see a significant year-over-year jump in OTT interest from 2023 to 2024. PeriodiCo saw requests for proposals (RFPs) from advertisers looking to order an OTT campaign leap 651% year over year. Further, the average advertiser using OTT increased their OTT spending by 29% in the same time frame.
PeriodiCo’s Senior Director of Client Success and Sales Readiness explained the benefit of the boot camp.
“After our in-market training sessions and having our sellers complete Locality’s OTT Academy at their own pace, we ran our own internal product testing across all of the digital solutions that we offer,” she said. “Our sales staff was by far the most well-educated and understanding of the streaming landscape and product offerings compared to any other media tactic that we provide.”
She continued, “The training provided by the Locality team was customized and strategic enough to make sure that each seller is confident articulating our differentiators and value provided to our advertisers.”
VideoNOW Helps Small Advertisers With Content Creation
When working with PeriodiCo and other private-label partners, Locality has recognized that some smaller advertisers may see the video ad creation process as a significant hurdle to advertising on streaming video content.
“Some advertisers, like local SMB companies, might not have a TV broadcast-ready piece of creative just yet,” DeVan explained.
This can be common with advertisers that have relied primarily on print, as is the case with some of PeriodiCo’s advertisers. This is where our AI-powered video advertising creation tool, VideoNOW, further helps PeriodiCo to close deals for streaming ads.
Built into Locality’s private-label platform, VideoNOW helps advertisers quickly and efficiently create custom video ads. These ads can work for both streaming advertising and broadcast TV. VideoNOW lets advertisers upload content such as company logos, text, images, or B-roll to automatically generate a local video ad. The program avoids the need for technical video editing skills or hiring an outside agency.
“Access to high-quality creative, fast, is a good competitive value proposition for PeriodiCo,” DeVan said. “Advertisers don’t have to go through a rigorous production process because VideoNOW gives our partners the ability to act like a mini creative agency.”
Locality and PeriodiCo Look Ahead to 2025
OTT advertising sales success in PeriodiCo’s top markets is now spurring our partnership to bring the two-day boot camp to some of the company’s smaller newspaper markets in 2024 and beyond. In addition to generating additive revenues, offering OTT advertising capabilities provides a point of differentiation for the company when its newspapers compete head-to-head against other newspapers in the same market.
“ ‘How do I pitch my client and win the pitch as opposed to my competitor down the street,’ is always the question,” DeVan said. “So we train them up to sell the OTT product as we would our own team while using the uniquely created brand pillars and positioning statements customized to each partner. We train them to be an expert. We’re trying to get all the PeriodiCo properties across the country really trained up. And we go into those markets to train those AEs, and then they sell.”
Learn how your own media company can grow revenues with OTT ad sales. Our streaming ad sales enablement team can help you get started. Contact us to schedule a demonstration of our private-label streaming ad capabilities.
*Locality offers all of our ad-sales partners a customizable private-label solution fully branded as their own. As such, we do not disclose the names of our private-label ad sales partners. Company and employee names and geographic details have been genericized to preserve anonymity.
