I have a bit of experience with this too. When I was starting up a social site in 02/03 we actually managed to barter content for adspace and creative leniency (so basically I was creating and delivering content weekly and trying to sell/fill adspots both in the show and during the adblocks--fcuking hard to juggle weekly!).
Advantage was that our whole show (was called XPosedONTV - launching on Bite TV - Rogers Digital Channel In Canada airing nationwide - 300K+ viewers. might still be some websocials episodes on YT) was based around pushing people to our site, and we dumped in as many calls to action as you can imagine. It was for talent/models/singles/active youth etc. (still up at websocials.com but it died...).
The channel was new too so a lot of their spots that they couldn't fill with allocated timeslot content - they would rerun ours along w/ads. In the end it was a truly miniscule conversion rate even with incentives, contests, referral ID's etc. On the flip side though, during the filming of our shows (we'd go to carshows, talent shows, model expo's, clubs, etc.) we would take xxxx photo's and hand out cards saying 'you've been spotted by websocials.com - your pic will be up on our site within 48hrs. They would come to see their pics, and would have to sign up to see full size... that worked great.
Anyway back on topic: Above and beyond finding a great channel(s) and audience, and getting your creative done, it's like anything else you have to split test and risk profit/loss. I've done radio ads going to .com landers that have been profitable, but my whole TV experience above was a huge loss re developing content/selling sponsorship/product(site) placement/driving incentives to go click our site/scheduling what we film and how we reach our demo.
Though I wouldn't do what I did above again, I would take a crack at tv ads again i.e with google adwords tv ads et al... Also wouldn't mind doing what some of my clients/partners do which are 10-22min infomercials going to .com landers or internally made offers. Buying non-avails (dead air time that isn't being used) at night isn't too hard with the right media buyers.
/rambled.
Advantage was that our whole show (was called XPosedONTV - launching on Bite TV - Rogers Digital Channel In Canada airing nationwide - 300K+ viewers. might still be some websocials episodes on YT) was based around pushing people to our site, and we dumped in as many calls to action as you can imagine. It was for talent/models/singles/active youth etc. (still up at websocials.com but it died...).
The channel was new too so a lot of their spots that they couldn't fill with allocated timeslot content - they would rerun ours along w/ads. In the end it was a truly miniscule conversion rate even with incentives, contests, referral ID's etc. On the flip side though, during the filming of our shows (we'd go to carshows, talent shows, model expo's, clubs, etc.) we would take xxxx photo's and hand out cards saying 'you've been spotted by websocials.com - your pic will be up on our site within 48hrs. They would come to see their pics, and would have to sign up to see full size... that worked great.
Anyway back on topic: Above and beyond finding a great channel(s) and audience, and getting your creative done, it's like anything else you have to split test and risk profit/loss. I've done radio ads going to .com landers that have been profitable, but my whole TV experience above was a huge loss re developing content/selling sponsorship/product(site) placement/driving incentives to go click our site/scheduling what we film and how we reach our demo.
Though I wouldn't do what I did above again, I would take a crack at tv ads again i.e with google adwords tv ads et al... Also wouldn't mind doing what some of my clients/partners do which are 10-22min infomercials going to .com landers or internally made offers. Buying non-avails (dead air time that isn't being used) at night isn't too hard with the right media buyers.
/rambled.
