"I think advertising is too expensive," explained Gary Wien, publisher of NewJerseyStage.com. "If you take a chance and it doesn't work for you, it's a huge blow to your budget. That's why we try to make advertising with us simple, affordable, and effective. We want it to be harder to say no to advertising with us than yes."
New Jersey Stage has one of the largest audiences for a website covering arts & entertainment in the area, but arguably the lowest advertising rates. In fact, the rates are designed to be affordable to every arts organization or artist.
“I know there are people who question why our rates are so low, I’ve actually heard that from some,” said Wien. “The truth is we want everybody to be able to promote their shows whether they are a performing arts center with annual budgets in the millions or a small theater company that produces one show per year. To accomplish this, we have a streamlined operation. We have just one employee and a crew of volunteer writers with expenses kept to a minimum. It’s a new era for publishing. After two decades of layoffs, the virtual end of print publishing, and many media outlets becoming non-profits themselves, our model makes sense.”
Individual banner ads at New Jersey Stage are just $50 for a month’s worth of promotion. A package of 4 different banner ad sizes (300x250, 300x600, 970x250, and 600x776) costs just $100 per month - less than most websites charge for a single ad. Each banner ad goes in a minimum of two ad rotations (general run of site and one based on the ad’s genre). But banner ads are only part of the story.
“New Jersey Stage knows that there are two main questions regarding advertising: pricing and effectiveness,” continued Wien. “With prices low, the question becomes how effective can we make the advertising? We start with targeting the right audience. New Jersey Stage has banner ad rotations for art, comedy, community, dance, film, kids, music (including special rotations for classical, jazz, and rock/pop), and theatre. Then we offer advertisers the ability to change their ads up to 4 times in a month - perfect for testing different ad messages, adding reviews to a theatre ad, or for replacing shows that were cancelled or rescheduled. We even provide free ad design if needed.”
“One of the most unique aspects of advertising at New Jersey Stage is getting 4 different ad sizes with the Main Ad Package,” stated Wien. “Repetition is important for advertising messages and the various ad sizes allow advertisers to get their messages across with more opportunities to get noticed. The various ad sizes are placed throughout the website in a way that advertisers will generally wind up with their ads shown equally across the four sizes.”
“We make the advertising even more valuable by including event listings (individual web pages for every performance) in the New Jersey Stage event calendar,” added Wien. “These event pages are indexed by search engines and further help promote the events. Show previews are upgraded to become a feature and preview for more exposure throughout the website. And both the show previews and the event listings are spotlighted the week they take place in our events of the week columns each Tuesday (often among our most read articles of the week).”
Another benefit comes from regular show previews for advertisers - especially for shows with lagging ticket sales. As New Jersey Stage maintains its event calendar each week, it looks for shows that could use a boost with a preview. Unlike websites that rely on stories about celebrities or the biggest artists in the world, New Jersey Stage gets a great response for every story which means the website can promote every show on a venue’s calendar. This allows the site to keep its advertisers in the news and help give added promotion to shows that need it.
“Think of New Jersey Stage as your own marketing consultant,” said Wien.
Earlier in 2024 when New Jersey Stage recognized that its links directory pages were getting good web numbers, it began providing upgraded listings to advertisers in the site’s links directory. In addition to a link to the advertiser’s website they also get their logo and social media links listed as well, plus a special page that includes links to all of their shows in the NJ Stage event calendar.
To top things off, every Monday through Friday New Jersey Stage highlights a story about one of their advertisers on Instagram when the site publishes its Daily Update.
“New Jersey Stage does not have a sales staff,” explained Wien. “Nearly all of our advertisers came to us on their own and once they start advertising they generally stay with us year after year. I know what it’s like to take a chance and spend a lot on an ad only to see little or no results from it. We want advertisers to get results from their ads with us, which is why we continuously seek new ways to improve their effectiveness.”
And if $50 per month is too high for an arts organization or artist, New Jersey Stage offers event listings for just $10 per event. Each performance gets its own web page and is spotlighted in the event columns the Tuesday before the event. If the event is a production with multiple performance (such as a play being presented by a theater company), every performance gets its own web page for that single $10 charge.
“We want advertising with New Jersey Stage to be a no-brainer,” said Wien.
For information on how to advertise at New Jersey Stage, visit the advertising section here.
