Advertisers: The New List Rental Revenue Source for a Sluggish Economy
Like many publishing companies, Penton Media’s list rental revenue has declined month-by-month since the spring due to the dismal state of the economy. But that hasn’t stopped the company from looking for new and innovative ways to keep list revenue afloat.
“We are definitely promoting to everyone we can,” Jerry Okabe, VP, audience marketing at Penton, tells AD. “We’ve even tried to sell more on the consumer side since all business people have a use for consumer products and services. But it’s a challenging sell and we haven’t seen a lot of activity as a result.”
One tactic that might spike some action, Okabe says, is trying to get Penton’s advertisers to rent its lists. “We’ve noticed that not as many endemic advertisers are using our subscribers files as they did before,” he says. “So we decided to create a giant ongoing campaign to encourage ad salespeople to include list rental in their conversations with clients because it’s the perfect multi-channel support to the space that they’re buying from us. We’re telling advertisers that if you’re doing online and print ads with us, it’s only natural to go to the same audience with a direct message from you.”
Okabe and his team also created an internal Webinar for the company’s salespeople and publishers to inform them of how important it is to push list rentals to advertisers. As a result, Okabe found out something quite surprising. “One of our salespeople was at a meeting with an advertiser and the advertiser was telling him that he was having trouble finding the right lists for a direct mail campaign. When the salesperson asked if the advertiser was including names from Penton’s lists, the advertiser said, ‘I didn’t know we could do that.’ So we think what we’re doing is an educational process.”
Okabe says that while most publishers do offer to rent lists to advertisers (Penton offers its advertisers a discount), he’s not sure how hard it’s being pushed. “I don’t remember a time when we’ve actively pushed it before now, but it makes sense today, especially from a multi-channel perspective.”
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