El Paso Inc: KTSM Invades KVIA Website?

Nothing surprises me anymore.

Or, so I thought.

A few days ago I visited our website, KVIA.com, and horror of horrors — KTSM-TV had taken it over.

The colorful NBC peacock, KTSM?s primetime anchor team and its station theme — “First.Live.Local? — boldly occupied the majority of the KVIA website leader board and multiple banner ads drowned out our own ABC-7 logos.

How could this happen?

For thirty minutes you would have thought that KVIA was the scene of a nuclear holocaust.

Everyone was dashing around, making frantic phone calls, trying to find out how one of our chief competitors had pulled off such a coup.

It turns out that KTSM had purchased what?s known in the trade as ?remnant? advertising through Google Adsense. Remnant also stands for ?remainder? advertising and it refers to advertising space that a media company has been unable to sell.

Depending on the medium, it can be time and space. Often it is bought at a steep discount with the advertiser having no control where it lands with no guarantee on the number of impressions. Advertising time and space is a perishable commodity.

If it is not sold, it is lost. Although the space and/or time are sold at a deeply reduced rate, media sellers benefit as well, monetizing inventory that would have otherwise gone to waste.

With a smile on her face, KVIA general sales manager Ren Santana posted a comment on KTSM?s Facebook page under the ?screen grab? of KTSM?s banner ad on KVIA?s homepage. Ren wrote, ?I just wanted to personally thank KTSM for becoming a part of the KVIA local advertising family. Obviously KTSM recognizes the value and size of the KVIA.com audience to promote their business. Thanks!?

KTSM general manager Gary Sotir politely messaged Ren that KTSM purchased a broad rotating Google ad and apparently it wasn?t caught in the competitive filter. ?This was not a sneak attack, just an anomaly of the tech world we live in,? he wrote.

For the moment we?ve filtered out KTSM but who knows what adventures await in the wild ride of the Worldwide web.