🆕 🚨 Design High-Impact Ads in Minutes That Wow Your Advertisers -

Discover Smartico Ad Studio

Local Ad Sales: Strategies & Case Studies

Regional Media Advertising for SMBs: Our Portfolio of Successful Client Campaigns with News Publishers from all around the World.

  • Christian Scherbel
  •     
  • May 2, 2025

7 Common Restaurant Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Running a restaurant business is hard – it is risky, competition is high and consumer preferences are constantly changing. Offering great food, amazing service, relaxing atmosphere and reasonable prices is not enough to succeed. A clear marketing focus and strategy is no longer a competitive advantage, but rather a must-have if you want to stay in the game. In this blog post we will examine the most common marketing mistakes in the industry and what you can do to avoid them.

Read More
  • Christian Scherbel
  •     
  • February 13, 2025

Smartico Joins America’s Newspapers

Smartico is now a member of America’s Newspapers, an organization dedicated to supporting local publishers and strengthening the future of journalism.
Read More
  • Simon Kriener
  •     
  • February 7, 2025

Smartico is Now a Verified Vendor Under IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF)

We’re pleased to announce that Smartico is now officially verified under IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) v2.2.
Read More

What are Direct Ad Sales and How Can Publishers Benefit from Them in a Cookie-Less Era?

Regional newspapers have found success by offering exclusive ads to local advertisers, controlling the ad content and landing pages, and targeting users based on their reading habits. Selling attention and measuring engagement rather than clicks has also proven effective in driving SMB ad sales.
Read More

Redefining the Narrative: How the Shift from Print to Digital Shapes Local Newspaper Advertising Today

Local newspapers are facing a challenge in transitioning their small print advertisers to digital platforms, which rely heavily on large accounts and programmatic advertising. The complexity of digital advertising and the lack of full-service solutions tailored to local advertisers have hindered their adoption of digital advertising.
Read More

Digital Advertising Edge: How Publishers Outshine Meta & Google in SME Market

Newspaper executives often discuss the digital advertising shortcomings of regional news publishers compared to global giants like Google and Facebook. However, I strongly disagree with this notion based on both theoretical and practical observations, supported by examples from small and large news publishers who have embraced competition and focused on their strengths.
Read More

Navigating the New Landscape: Strategies to Elevate CPMs Amidst Declining Programmatic Revenues

Stock market valuations have dropped, signaling that the astronomical growth rates of 2021 were temporary rather than sustainable. While e-commerce will continue to grow, publishers are now facing reduced CPMs, particularly in programmatic campaigns, as the focus shifts away from buying revenue at any cost.
Read More

How to Scale Digital Direct Sales in the Long Tail of Local Print Advertisers

Local small and medium-sized business (SMB) print advertisers remain a significant revenue source for regional publishers. However, many publishers struggle to convert these print revenues into sustainable digital revenues due to the small size and limited online booking capabilities of these customers, coupled with the neglect from digital ad sales teams.
Read More

Kölner Stadtanzeiger Medien’s Strategy to Convert Print-Only Advertisers to Digital Buyers

Kölner Stadtanzeiger Medien conducted an analysis of their regional advertisers' digital spending and discovered that while larger and local key accounts successfully embraced digital transformation, many small and medium-sized business (SMB) print customers were still not investing in online budgets.
Read More

Digital Transformation at Scale: Somedia’s Innovative Integration of Digital Components in SMB Print Advertising

Somedia, a Swiss news publisher, recognized the untapped potential of local advertisers in digital compared to regional key accounts. To leverage this opportunity, they introduced "Smart Ads," a solution that creates digital campaigns with integrated landing pages for print advertisers at scale.
Read More

Cost-Effective Strategies for Local Advertisers: Achieving Affordable Banner Creation in Digital Publishing

Lets discusses the importance of obtaining cost-effective banner designs and creatives for scaling local advertising with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and acknowledge the price sensitivity in this industry, particularly during the pandemic, and recognize the need to keep creation costs low in order to achieve a viable business model and return on investment.
Read More

Case Study: How Two Newspapers Turned Not Performing Landing Pages into a Profitable Advertising Channel

We will address three major challenges in successful local display advertising that need to be overcome to scale advertising in the long tail with SME customers.
Read More

4 Reasons why we believe in the profitability and scalability of long tail SMB display ads

We want to address the publisher's curiosity regarding the emphasis on the long tail of advertising sales at "Smartico." Lets explain why we are so obsessed with the long tail and its revenue potential for digital advertising. The obsession is not solely due to the influence of web 2.0 or the success of Amazon but rather stems from four primary reasons. We delve into these reasons and highlights the significance of the long tail for publishers.
Read More

Uniting Communities: Building a Local Crisis Marketplace for Support and Solidarity

Local advertisers are facing significant challenges due to the pandemic, making it crucial for local publishers to provide reliable information. To help, our platform has been developed, allowing private and company announcements to be easily published on publisher websites. Our platform supports local businesses, individuals offering help, and readers searching for relevant listings.
Read More

New Digital Revenue Streams with Print Inserts

If you're looking to monetize inserts in the digital realm, simply using flip page catalogues on your newspaper's website won't suffice. Instead, leverage mobile-first banners and landing pages to create authentic digital campaigns.
Read More

60 Local Advertorial Ideas that Drive Sales Now

Despite the absence of local events, there is still hope for generating advertorial ideas. Through an analysis of over 200 newspapers across the EU and crunching the numbers, a list of 60 advertorial ideas has been compiled. These ideas have been categorized into three types.
Read More

How to drive local ad sales in times of crisis and short-time work

The current crisis faced by local advertisers due to lockdowns is just one of the challenges local sales teams are dealing with. Publishers are also reducing hours for their sales teams and ad managers, making it even more difficult to meet advertisers' needs. To overcome these challenges and boost local advertising sales, several issues must be addressed.
Read More

Mastering Digital Success: Custom Landing Pages are The Secret Sauce to Win with Local Advertisers

Landing Pages are crucial for local advertising campaigns. Four main reasons emphasize the importance of owning and controlling your Landing Page.
Read More
In Smartico´s blog and newsletter we inform you about the latest trends in local and regional advertising. We present best practices from over 200 publishers, and share ideas, inspiration and recipes for success
Use Cases
Products
Resources
Follow us

🤝Join our bi-weekly SMB Advertising Sales Briefing for Newspaper Executives for free!

Receive industry trends, sales hacks, best practises, sales materials from other publishers, advertising benchmarks and inspiration for new sales products and
tactics directly into your inbox.
100% focussed on digital advertising sales for publishers.

đź’ˇ1.000s of newspaper executives already joined

Check out Ad Studio highlights

Apply for Early Access