New advertising feature to boost small businesses

Posted by Addiply on Nov 17, 09 12:00 AM in News

A great new feature has been added to The Journal's Northumberland websites that will help small businesses in the area to get themselves noticed.

In keeping with the interactive community feel of Journal's 22 websites covering the county, businesses can now create their own adverts quickly and easily.

With the new self-serve advertising feature, known as Addiply, businesses looking to advertise to a specific geographical audience can do so in a matter of minutes.

Business owners can choose the wording of their ad, pay for it for £5 per week, and have it ready to go in minutes.

They will know exactly where it will be placed on their chosen site and select for how long it will be there.

And thanks to the local nature of the sites, there are no worries about wasted coverage as small businesses can cost-effectively focus their ads on their immediate target audience.

Regional multimedia manager for The Journal and Evening Chronicle, Helen Dalby, said: "The Northumberland community websites have 25,000 monthly users in total and provide vital news coverage for the county at a genuinely local level.

"This new advertising service is good for local business owners because it's quick and very simple to use, and their ad goes up on their chosen website in a matter of minutes.

"If a business such as a butcher's shop has a special offer running for just a week, they can create and upload an ad within minutes and place it on the site for their local area for that week only."

To create an ad, advertisers simply click on the Addiply link at the top right-hand side of the screen. They get a choice of which of our Northumberland sites to advertise on. They then register, which is free.

Advertisers then put in the text they want to display, and payment is through PayPal, a secure and trusted web payment service.

After choosing where it will appear, the ad is approved by The Journal's web team before it appears online.

The system is better for local firms than larger services such as Google ads, because the sites are targeted at such specific local areas.

Also, adverts are not rotated but always appear in a fixed position on the site, and remain there for the chosen time period rather than disappearing after a certain number of hits have been achieved.

The Journal and Evening Chronicle's advertising director Julie Emmerson said: "Addiply is a great opportunity for small-scale advertisers who wish to target their message to a specific local community.

"The Journal's advertising team can offer a broad range of online opportunities for businesses that wish to reach a wider area."

Contact the team on (0191) 204-3367 for more information, or click on the grey and red boxes in the top right hand corner to place your advert

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