As All Eyes Turn To Local, Television Steps Up

TV[R]EV analyst Alan Wolk: Reaching local television audiences was sort of a ‘nice to have’ piece of most national advertisers’ marketing plans. That all changed with the pandemic.

Reaching local television audiences was sort of a “nice to have” piece of most national advertisers’ marketing plans. They knew they could use local buys to heavy up in places they needed help, but beyond that, it wasn’t much of a concern, something they could probably handle with digital or social if they really needed to.

That all changed with the pandemic. Suddenly local audiences were hot. At a time when states are opening up and shutting down (“The Hammer and the Dance”) at different times and in no predictable pattern, running the same ads nationally no longer made much sense. Brands were scrambling to be able to target local audiences so that they could deliver messaging that was relevant to that specific region at that exact moment.

Read more on Next TV here.