Utah Affiliate TV Station Comparative Analysis

Marketing with TV and Web

Local businesses are eventually conflicted with the question ‘where do I put my advertising dollars for the best return?’ In Utah we have 3 major affiliate TV Stations, KSL5, ABC4, and KUTV2, all of which also have great websites that can be utilized to driving traffic to your business. So how do you determine the best stations?

The Analysis

Although, not an exact science, one way of determining the best station is to analyze their website. This will give you a good idea of who the market leader is in your area. I am going to specifically look at KSL5, ABC4, KUTV2, and KJazz. While KJazz is a smaller station it has some of the added benefits of the local movie theaters, so I am adding it to the list also.

How do the major search engines regard each TV station?

In the world of the web there exists 3 major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Google is the leader in search engines with a U.S. market share of a 47.4 percent of all searches. With a majority of the searches being performed by Google, it is a great tool for analyzing web sites. Google ranks pages by using a 1 to 10 PR (page rank) scale, with 10 being the best. The higher your PR, the higher Google regards your website’s credibility. How does Google see our TV Stations?

Google PR Results as of 06/2007:
KSL5 PR=6
KUTV2 PR=6
KJAZZ PR=5
ABC4 PR=3

It’s clear that Google regards KSL5 and KUTV2 as the top TV stations in Utah. While PR is not everything it does hold its weight in the Internet community and is a key factor in determining where your page shows up in the Google search. When determining your Internet marketing strategy you want to look for sites with a high PR. If you have high PR sites linking to you your PR will be higher as a general rule of thumb.

One other thing that you need to consider is the traffic that flows to and from the site. Alexa has developed a way to compare sites traffic. While many criticize the accuracy of Alexa’s numbers, it is a great tool for comparing relative numbers. Let’s do some comparing.

Alexa Traffic Results:

According to Alexa, KSL5 not only has the most traffic but is also the most consistent. KUTV2 in second, ABC4 in third and KJazz in fourth.

Other factors to consider may include position of ads, size, and impressions. With cost aside, I would put my marketing dollars into KSL5. KSL5 has a great PR and large amounts of traffic running through its site making it a perfect pick for increasing traffic and Page Ranking.

If you have any comments, we’d love to hear from you..