Advertising on Highly Targeted, Niche Sites

There are websites for everything and everyone. As a media planner, it is often difficult to narrow down the list of sites to advertise on because there are so many. But what happens when a client’s campaign is so targeted that it is actually difficult to find sites to advertise?

One of Overdrive’s clients’, the international calling card company Pingo (owned by iBasis), targets people from other countries who live in the US, but need to keep in touch with loved ones in their home country. These online media campaigns are not as simple as contacting a big publisher that represents international sites. Pingo’s pre-paid calling card is only available for purchase online so it is crucial to reach their target market on country-specific sites. These sites tend to be small and not optimized for SEO so they often do not pop on the first page of Google results or appear in advanced media planning tools. We’ve gotten pretty good at finding and advertising on these hard-to-find sites. In fact, Overdrive’s online media team now has in-country contacts in over 40 countries. Here are some tips and tricks to finding and launching niche international campaigns:

• Conduct focus groups with your client’s target market to gain an understanding of how they consume media
  
  
• Conduct online searches with country-specific keywords through Google. A lot of these sites are not optimized for SEO, so you may have to weed through of couple pages of results.
  
  
• Use web crawling technology such as Alexa to find out traffic details and related links
  
  
• Become familiar with in-country cultural and religious holidays. Tailor your ad campaign to either increase or decrease impressions during this time depending on your client’s product/service
  
  
• Make sure that the site’s content is in line with your client’s brand image
  
  
• Make sure that the site accepts US wire transfers for payment. If not, set up a PayPal or Western Union account, but be wary of extra fees
  
  
• International payments may require additional lead time so engage in multi-month campaigns to limit the transfer time and avoid multiple transfer fees
  
  
  

  For other considerations, please visit the Launching Multicultural Media Campaigns blog post.