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Councilor: City could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by putting ads on city Web sites
By adamg on Wed, 01/25/2012 - 4:13pm
City Councilor Rob Consalvo (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan), today proposed slapping advertising on city Web sites, including library and school sites - and even the site run by the city's public-housing authority.
Consalvo says cityofboston.gov got 6.8 million visits last year, the BPS site some 4.7 million.
With this kind of traffic, the city and the BPS could potentially raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue from advertising on these Web sites as well as advertising on associated city Web sites such as the Boston Public Library, the Boston Public Health Commission, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Boston Housing Authority.
Consalvo said he would want to see "strong content review" to ensure inappropriate ads are not run (Ed. note: Darn, there go the plans to capture some of the MBTA's liquor-ad sales by putting beer ads on school-lunch menus).
However, the city might have to leave its flagship site out of any ad solicitations. The US General Services Administration, which handles registration of .gov sites, such as cityofboston.gov, bars advertising:
A Gov Internet domain may not be used to advertise for private individuals, firms, or corporations, or imply in any manner that the government endorses or favors any specific commercial product, commodity, or service.
The prohibition does not apply to sites that are run with other domains, such as bpl.org, bostonpublicschools.org and fatsmack.org.
H/t Kate Hutchinson for digging up the ad ban.
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Comments
$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Ya raise money for who? Not the tax payers.
Found it
It's very amusing that the policies regarding the .gov domain are on dotgov.gov, but that the site itself is restricted. Multiple sites say "usage restrictions can be found on dotgov.gov" but when you get there, it's a password only site for admins.
However, the City of New York's CIO published the relevant passage in response to a similar query. The rules for the .gov domain state:
State government entity website managers have made tremendous strides to improve the content and overall experience of visitors to their websites, including making their sites more citizen-centric and easier to interact with. As the State makes more and more services and information available on the Internet, new challenges emerge. One such challenge is the issue of advertising on state government entity websites or creating partnerships with advertising companies to host an agency's website. From a funding aspect, this opportunity may look attractive. However, numerous complex legal and policy issues arise when considering advertising on government websites.
Perhaps it is in light of these issues that Gov Internet domain registration requirements clearly prohibit advertising on public websites registered in the .gov domain. Specifically, "a .gov domain may not be used to advertise for private individuals, firms, or corporations, or imply in any manner that the government endorses or favors any specific commercial product, commodity, or service." See http://www.dotgov.gov/program_guidelines.aspx
LIbrary revenue should stay in Library fund
If there were ad and revenue from www.bpl.org, those should stay as additional funds for library use and not go to other parts of the city budget.
To go off topic, why doesn't
To go off topic, why doesn't the MBTA have more advertisements? There seems to be a good amount of usable space and I don't think riders would mind staring at more commercials if their fares stayed the same. Just a thought.
If the MBTA properly managed the advertising space
they currently have, there would be no need for either more space or a fare increase. Examples:
How much money is Clear Channel really raking in for those obnoxious billboards along I-93 they're paying the MBTA a paltry $2,000 per month for the use of the land?
How much money is the MBTA losing when they agree to give an advertiser exclusive use of a station ("station domination")and then don't change out the ads for four or five months at a time (or longer)? For that matter, how often do you see a "repeat" advertiser use "station domination" more than once in a three year period?
How much money is the MBTA losing by relying on a fixed contract that pays a set minimum amount every month, regardless of how much their vendor collects?
I question his underlying assumptions
Councilor Consalvo seems to be assuming some rather large ad rates. To even get $100,000 in revenue from the Boston.gov site, it looks like he needs to get 1.5 cents per visit. That seems quite high since the click through rate can be on the order of a few percent and you don't start earning much money until people click through.
Adam, what are the rates you earn from the ads on your site? Can they be expressed as an average per visitor or an average per click-through?
Yeah, I was thinking his numbers might be high
When Consalvo says 6.x million visits a year, I don't know if he means "visits" the way Web types mean it or if he means "page views."
A "visit" is, basically, a person calling up a Web site and then looking at some pages in a given period of time (like an hour, maybe).
On Universal Hub, the average visit involves a little less than 2 page views. I have no idea how many page views the average cityofboston.gov visitor goes through; I suspect it's well more than 2 simply because you go there, then go to another page to pay your taxes or look up something in the calendar or whatever.
So let's assume Consalvo really does mean "visits" and let's say the city and BPS sites get 33 million page views a year, based on Consalvo's 11+ million visit number for the two.
And let's assume the city gets $10 for every 1,000 pages viewed (which is way higher than I typically get, but which is not out of the realm of possibility for a geo-tartgeted site). And let's assume, like the MBTA, they run a single ad per page.
At a $10 rate (or CPM), that works out to $330,000 a year. Not bad. But: That assumes the city sells out every single ad space, which isn't likely (you can fill the blanks with Google Ads or ads from "remnant" networks, but those are not going to get you anywhere near $10). And it assumes there is no cost for selling those ad spaces, which is also unlikely. The T has a deal with GateHouse to sell its online ad space; I have no clue what the financial arrangement is, but I'm guessing GateHouse is not doing it for free.
Now, the BPL probably has some large number of visits - and think of the interesting things you could do with ads on catalog queries (aw, hell, let's just sell the BPL to Amazon and be done with it). But now take away all the cityofboston.gov impressions they aren't supposed to be selling because of the restrictions on .gov domains, so that might be a wash. The BRA might be another interesting site for selling - you might get a premium for ads targeting, say, the developers who pour over filings there. But the housing authority? Really? I don't think so.
So my rough estimate is that it couldn't hurt to look at advertising, but we're really not looking at tons of money, and I have no idea where Consalvo got his "hundreds of thousands of dollars" from. I suspect the city will make far more from the Suffolk Downs casino, so maybe that's where councilors should be focusing their efforts. But somebody who actually knows both math and online sales please feel free to tell me how I'm wrong here.
Rob Consalvo does a nice job.
Some of these other politicians are simply retarded. ShotSpotter was a big success.
I think we should rename the city "Fidelity"
or maybe "Liberty Mutual", Massachusetts. It's got sort of a patriotic ring to it, no? If the price is right, what the hell?
Put the neighborhood names out to bid as well- I bet we could make mad bank.