Connoisseur CEO: Geotargeting Won't Benefit Smaller Stations
For all but the largest stations, geotargeting radio broadcasts would slice up the audience into pieces too small to attract enough ad revenue to offset the costs of the service, said Connoisseur CEO Jeff Warshaw in a letter to the…
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FCC Monday. Comparisons of geotargeted radio ads to the digital ads aimed at consumers based on knowledge of their interests gleaned from their online activity “simply do not withstand scrutiny,” Warshaw said. With geotargeting, radio stations will still reach the same audience they always have, but chopped into “ever-smaller” pieces for any targeted ad, reducing their revenue. Geotargeted radio supporters’ argument that the service would be voluntary doesn’t ameliorate the problem, Warshaw said. “Once even one station deploys geocasting technology in a market, advertisers will pressure competing stations into doing the same, fragmenting the market. Larger broadcasters -- with bigger audience chunks to slice up -- could benefit from geotargeting by using it to target specific sections of their markets, but only at the expense of smaller more local broadcasters in those areas," Warshaw said. “Any big regional FM station could use geocasting to target businesses in the smaller communities in their service areas,” Warshaw said. “Presumably this crippling of local radio is not what the Commission wants to achieve here.” "We remain puzzled as to why some broadcasters want the FCC to micromanage the economics of the radio broadcast industry when it’s very clear that the record shows that geo-targeting promotes localism, raises no technical issues, and our proposed rule change is voluntary, with many small broadcasters welcoming the innovation," emailed geotargeting proponent GeoBroadcast Solutions.