So what does one learn by processing of all the print ads for the top 100 or so US retailers? Quite a lot about the makeup of a circular ad. For example, during the one year period from 9/1/2008 thru 8/31/2009 ShopLocal found that the:
ShopLocal has the unique ability to measure and trend the volume, depth and frequency of retail newspaper print advertising.
- Number of listings per promotion was on average: 137 (median = 99)
- Number of listings per promotional page was on average: 11.6 (median = 10)
- Number of overall pages per promotion was on average: 15.3 (median = 9 & mode = 9.5)
- Number of versions per promotion was on average: 17.3 (median = 3 & mode = 1)
- By converting a decent chunk of non-versioned content (e.g., catalogs), this is why the mode is 1
- Number of promotions per year per retailer was on average: 88.5 (median = 49 & mode = 9)
- By processing some catalogs, this is why the mode was 9 as some retailers that use catalogs only put out a few larger books per year
- Number of days that a promotion is live was on average: 30.3 (median = 9 & mode = 7)
- For most typical Sunday newspaper type circulars, the typical sale spans 7 days – Sunday thru Saturday
- English language promotions make up about 93%, Spanish contributes 6% and French contributes 2%
- Circular type promotions make up 84% of the overall ad volume and the rest is split between catalogs (7%), guides (1%) mailers (1%), ROP ads (1%) and other (6%)
I’m looking forward on doing some more analysis with the awesome heavy lifting that our in-house analytics team provides to help trend these stats against historical data going back to 1999 so as to gauge the level of print promotion decline that seems to be discussed frequently in the media lately. My hypothesis is that the decline will be very minimal at best and limited to certain retail industry segments.
So within the last week or so, two nifty retail print ads appeared within the Chicago Tribune newspaper that promoted a reader of the print ad to go online for more information. This type of of integrated multi-channel promotion really is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
The two retailer examples that were spotted out in the wild were for Sears and Target. Both do a nice job of messaging that there are other store based deals available within the retailer’s online weekly ad site.
Sears in the bottom left hand corner (e.g., the blue box) of this print ad that appeared within the Chicago Tribune is trying to promote three e-buster deals that are only available online for a limited period of time. It also messages that there are other great deals always available within the Sears online weekly ad site.
Within the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune, Target is taking out a ROP ad every single week within the bottom of the front page that is promoting grocery deals within their SuperTarget (those Target stores that sell grocery items) stores and the same ad also attempts to drive consumers back to their online weekly ad site for more deals.
It’s fun to grow. So yesterday another instance of CircularCentral went live which brings the total number of live sites up to 106 with the addition of our latest partner Boston.com. To learn more about the other sites that makeup this network, read more here.
- Boston.com (online side of The Boston Globe)
The latest and greatest addition to the CircularCentral network of sites - Boston.com
What in the world does:
- Store Coupons
- Local Inventory
- Store Events & Announcements
- Local Promotions
have in common? They are all all local store focused and represent the complete set of resources that would help any in-market shopper. Collectively over the last few months, the team here at ShopLocal has been doing a lot of thinking and discussing where the future of our business is headed. One of the most immediate conclusions is that we need diversify our business well beyond the current focus area of circulars and catalogs. There will be a day were no print circular is created and inserted into newspapers. This is not an immediate threat or doomsday scenario, but just prudent long-term preparedness.
So once the focus is off the circular, our team immediately turned to bring other great store focused sources of content to a more visible nature. Areas like store-level closeouts, coupons and in-store events are just a few examples. The point being, ShopLocal quickly is evolving to become a store focused, promotion based marketing tool, of which the weekly ad / circular content is just one source. This concept is what the team is calling a Shopper Planning Center (working name – still on the hunt for something better – maybe SmartDeals? Suggestions welcome…)
The goals of what a Shopper Planning Center can do for a retailer are:
- Deepen the amount of location specific content by bringing in promotional data from sources that have no current outlet of home on the internet (including retailer.com)
- Become more multi-channel in terms of offering items available for sale online
- Manage all of this increased volume of content by the use of data driven features such as site personalization, product recommendation and related products
- Do all of this so as to increase local, in-store conversions that are fueled by online research and activities
This is a list of some of the potential content / data sources that a retailer could easily load into the Shopper Planning Center.
So the team here at ShopLocal took this vision of a retailer store-centric deal center (or Shopper Planning Center) and came up with two initial visual manifestations.
Here is a Borders Books "Magic Shelf" inspired visualization that the team did for Kohl's of how many unique content sources can be well integrated into an engaging user experience / interface (Ux /Ui). This entire site would be built as a rich internet application (RIA) so that user could pan up, down, left and right to view the various result sets.
Here is a low fidelity wire frame that was done for Best Buy that does a great job of showing how store event content and eCommerce content and weekly ad content can be pulled together with personalization and localization.
WOW. We finally reached critical mass. As of yesterday, the CircularCentral team here at ShopLocal has official launched into production one-hundred and five (yes, 105!) co-branded instances of CircularCentral (mainly across the Gannett Digital Network of newspaper and broadcast sites). That’s a lot of web sites to produce, test and migrate in a very short span of about 2 months. But the team did it, on schedule every step of the way.
105 CircularCentral sites are now live and lots of future growth to go! The orders for new partner site instances for CircularCentral just keep rolling in.
The below directory of CircularCentral sites follows the following format:
- Publisher or Broadcast Station or Newspaper Partner Name
- Local Market(s) Served
- Web site address / URL of the corresponding co-branded instance of CircularCentral
Here is the complete current list of ALL of the CircularCentral network of sites:
- Yahoo!
- YourLI.com
- The Cincinnati Enquirer
- The Detroit Free Press – Custom Integrated eEdition Version
- The Detroit News – Custom Integrated eEdition Version
- The Indianapolis Star
- The Arizona Republic
- Asbury Park Press
- Florida Today
- The Des Moines Register
- The News-Press
- The Greenville News
- The Honolulu Advertiser
- The Courier-Journal
- The Tennessean
- Reno Gazette-Journal
- Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
- The Journal News
- The News Journal
- Asheville Citizen-Times
- WXIA-TV, Atlanta
- The Burlington Free Press
- Courier News
- Courier-Post
- KUSA-TV, Denver
- The Detroit Free Press
- The Detroit News
- Green Bay Press-Gazette
- The Clarion-Ledger
- KARE-TV, Minneapolis-St. Paul
- The Montgomery Advertiser
- Daily Record
- The Desert Sun
- Pensacola News Journal
- Poughkeepsie Journal
- Argus Leader
- Springfield News-Leader
- Tallahassee Democrat
- USA TODAY
- The Post-Crescent
- Press & Sun-Bulletin
- Star-Gazette
- The Reporter
- Iowa City Press-Citizen
- Journal and Courier
- Lansing State Journal
- Herald Times Reporter
- News Journal
- The Star Press
- Oshkosh Northwestern
- Statesman Journal
- The Sheboygan Press
- The Shreveport Times
- St. Cloud Times
- Stevens Point Journal
- WTSP-TV, St. Petersburg
- Tucson Citizen
- Wausau Daily Herald
- The Daily Tribune
- The Town Talk
- Battle Creek Enquirer
- Telegraph-Forum
- Newspaper Network of Central Ohio
- Chillicothe Gazette
- The Leaf-Chronicle
- Coshocton Tribune
- The News-Messenger
- Fort Collins Coloradoan
- Great Falls Tribune
- The Daily Advertiser
- Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
- The Marion Star
- Marshfield News Herald
- The News Star
- The Advocate
- Daily World
- News Herald
- Times Herald
- Times Recorder
- WLBZ-TV, Bangor
- WGRZ-TV, Buffalo
- WKYC-TV, Cleveland
- WLTX-TV, Columbia
- WZZM-TV, Grand Rapids
- WFMY-TV, Greensboro
- Hattiesburg American
- The Ithaca Journal
- The Jackson Sun
- WJXX-TV & WTL-TV
- WBIR-TV, Knoxville
- Daily Press & Argus, Livingston County
- KTHV-TV, Little Rock
- WMAZ-TV, Macon
- The Baxter Bulletin
- The Daily News Journal
- WCSH-TV, Portland
- Palladium-Item
- KXTV-TV, Sacramento
- The Californian
- The Daily Times
- The Spectrum
- KSDK-TV, St. Louis
- The Daily News Leader
- The Daily Journal
- Visalia Times-Delta
- WUSA-TV, Washington
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