Publisher Success Story:
Times Publishing Company
Erie Times-News and GoErie.com
GoErie.Com
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The website for Erie Times-News
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GoErie.com receives a monthly average of
430,000 unique visitors and over 4.2 million page
views, and its print paper, the Erie Times-News,
has a daily circulation of about 40,000 and over
55,000 for its Sunday edition.
A CivicScience polling widget runs on their home
page, all main news section pages, and in-article
pages (at least 12 pages in total) – free of charge.
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Partnership with CivicScience launched in March 2014,
replacing a poll from their CMS.
Collected over 604,000 poll responses in 2014.
Averages about 50,000 poll responses per month.
Primary benefits of poll data:
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Advertising revenue growth
Use for editorial support insights
Use for customer care and support
Fills gap: in area where syndicated MSA data is not available
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Use Cases for CivicScience Insights
Advertising Revenue Growth & Sales Support:
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Head of Business Development “clearly saw the value” in using the polling application and data
collected to help with advertiser targeting, retention, and revenue growth.
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For past 3 months, have given over a dozen presentations that include poll data collected via the
CivicScience application: top-line results plus deeper, respondent profile insights.
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Business development manager works with sales reps to identify advertiser candidates for this strategy. Tactics
include asking custom questions of strong relevance to advertiser, and walking them through a dashboard of results
and drilling down into profiles by answer choice.
The poll data (in combination with other information and offers) has helped them land new advertiser deals,
competitive wins over other ad buying options (i.e. agency/broadcast spend), and account growth – in one case, an
over 6X increase in ad dollars spent in one year.
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Advertisers impacted are diverse: medical products and services; funeral home; automotive dealers (out of market and
in-market); and more.
Results: Revenue growth seen in digital ad sales, as well as with off-line products for the
publisher.
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Use Cases for CivicScience Insights
Editorial Support:
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4-5 team members write questions daily to weekly
Easy to train them to load questions and report on data
Questions have a local focus
Questions include sentiment about news articles recently published as well as research for
future coverage ideas
Locally-oriented questions they author often see response rates of 16-28%.
“With 10,000 or more responses per week, we’re able to affirm, challenge, or update
notions of community values that, along with other metrics, help shape resource allocation
and coverage plans. And, the ability to embed the polls in related articles drives visitor
engagement and aid in time on site.” – Matt Martin, Online News Editor
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Use Cases for CivicScience Insights
Customer Service & Support:
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Runs poll questions on side rails for Customer Service pages, related to their products and
services
Helps them optimize their service
Can’t easily get this data from other methods
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Praise for CivicScience
“The timely data we can deliver through CivicScience gives
us competitive intelligence that is not easy to get, and adds a
unique selling capability that gives advertisers confidence
and guidance in their campaign investments.” – Bill Dietz, Jr.,
Business Development Manager
“CivicScience provides GoErie.com with an easy-to-use
polling solution that provides us with fast, reliable data about
our audience that we would have tremendous difficulty
getting from other means. It’s easy to add to our pages, not
disruptive to our visitors’ experiences, yet still results in large
volumes of valuable data collection for us.” - Ben Smith,
Webmaster, GoErie.com
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