Advertising Solutions for
Municipalities and Agencies

We understand that government agencies aim to increase revenues while managing cost. Many municipalities will find that their current websites are untapped sources of revenue. Due to the usually high number of unique monthly visitors that visit government sites every month, advertisers see great value in placing advertising on those sites. Setting up advertising internally can be an extremely time consuming and labor intensive process. Municipal Media Solutions makes managing advertising on your government website as easy as possible. Through our entirely FREE service, we will be there to guide you through every step of the processes.
Learn More About How It Works Learn More About The Benefits Of Advertising

Initial Setup

Your website's content and visitor usability are our biggest concerns. MMS will work with you to place advertisements in locations that best fit your website's needs. We will not move forward until you are absolutely pleased with the look and feel of your website. During the process of initially setting up other government websites, we have found that each government entity works at their own pace. Part of our job is to work as fast as you are willing to go. One of the most important decisions to be made during this phase is the location of the advertising on your webpage. We have the flexibility to place advertisements in different locations on each page of your site. For example, we would be able to place an advertisement on the top portion of your "about us" page but not on the top portion of your "home" page. From an advertiser's point of view, the most valuable location is above the fold on the right hand side of the page. This location is seen by all visitors to your website, which is why it is most valuable to advertisers. Please be assured that no matter where you decide to place an advertisement, it will be placed in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and unobtrusive.

Why Allow Advertising?

Here are a few reasons why you should consider placing advertisements on your website. 1. New Revenue Stream To put it simply, monetizing your web traffic means free money. With our help, and very little effort, your website and/or email messages will become mini revenue centers. Our entire philosophy is focused on helping government entities generate new revenue without placing an increased burden on the shoulders of their constituents. The additional revenue streams created by online advertising will allow you to better serve the constituencies that depend on you. 2. It Doesn't Cost You Anything There are no start up, maintenance or membership fees involved with our service. With just a little bit of set up time on your end, we will have your website generating revenue with no cost to you. MMS operates on a gross revenue sharing basis. You will receive 60% of all of the revenue while we receive 40%, using our share to cover all of the costs and time associated with:
  • Sales
    • Developing Sales Collateral and Materials
    • Development of Advertising Packages and Pricing
    • Generating and Closing Sales Leads
  • Management
    • Billing, Collections, and Reconciliation
    • Managing Advertiser Relationships
    • Ongoing Program Management
    • Ad Trafficking and Reporting
    • Advertising Content Control
  • Technology
    • Ad Server Management
    • Technical Support
    • Customer Service
 3. Complete Advertisement Content Control As our partner, you will have complete content control over all advertising displayed on your website. In other words you, like our existing clients, will not have to worry about advertisements hurting the reputation of your website. 4. You Are In Demand Advertisers already want to be on your site because your municipality or agency has an outstanding relationship, and is engaged, with the audiences advertisers are looking for. These audiences currently visit your website, receive your emails, and subscribe to your e-newsletters. Moreover, the population you serve generally reflects a specific demographic group, which makes targeting easier for local, regional, and national advertisers alike.

Ad Content Control

MMS has worked tirelessly, to make sure that only the most suitable and reputable ads appear on our government partner's websites. In many ways, Ad Content Control is even more important to us than revenue generation because we understand the level of prestige our government partners must maintain. Ideally, all of your website's inventory will be sold by the MMS sales force. Ads sold by the sales force will generate the maximum amount of revenue while giving you ample time to review the ads in advance. In reality, even the best sales force will not be able to sell all of your inventory directly to advertisers. Fortunately, there are solutions to this problem. All solutions involve the use of ad networks; the difference between each option is the amount and type of control you have over ads being displayed for remnant inventory. For a more thorough list of our solutions, please contact us. To begin with, we have developed our own set of parameters regarding forbidden content. We do not allow advertisers to display advertisements which include any of the following:
  • Guns
  • Pornography
  • Potentially slanderous or libelous content
  • Bad language, body parts, or proxies for bad language
  • Indecent language or behavior
  • Gambling
  • Hostility or violence
  • Illegal discrimination of any group
  • Attacks considered ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious
  • Content harmful to children, emotionally or physically
  • Alcoholic beverages and Tobacco Products
  • Inherently dangerous products
  • Advertisements and/or links for products and/or services that violate the law
  • Advertising that is false, misleading, deceptive and/or offensive to the moral standards of the community, or contrary to good taste
  • Advertising which might be contrary to the best interests of the Site Owner, its departments, appointed and elected officials, respectively and/or states or suggests that proponents or opponents of the persons or measures advertised are vulgar, greedy, immoral, monopolistic, illegal or unfair
  • Involves or refers to political, religious, moral or environmental issues subject to public debate
  • Any information that would subject the website to be a public forum
  • Links to sites that contain malicious software that may be uploaded and/or downloaded to the Internet user’s computer
 We understand that there may be other areas of control that are pertinent to you, and we will be sure to include those areas as well.

Generating Revenue

When we sell advertising on our government partner's websites, we charge advertisers on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. One impression occurs every time a page is visited. Therefore, the more impressions your site produces, the more advertisements your site will serve, and the more revenue your government agency will generate. However, websites that produce a smaller number of impressions can generate revenue as well. One of the main factors that goes into pricing advertising on your site is the location of the advertising space. Advertising space that is visible by all visitors will be priced at a higher rate. Also, the number of advertisements your site serves per page will have an effect on revenue as well. A less trafficked site that has two advertisements per page has the potential to generate as much revenue as a twice as busy site which only displays one advertisement per page.

Technology

After the Initial Setup some or all of your pages will contain ad tags, one or more on each page depending on how many ads you think are appropriate on those pages. Each tag is a piece of Java Script that gets executed when you load the page in the browser. Upon execution, a call is made to the ad server -- which Municipal Media operates. In response, the ad server delivers an ad to the browser, one of the possibly many ads that are available at that time. After the tags are placed, you will not have to do any more work as the Municipal Media team will take care of providing ads for your pages.

Reporting

Once a month, Municipal Media will provide your government agency with a report that details all monies received and all new advertising contracts closed so that partners can have an understanding of future revenue streams and outstanding revenue balances. Reports also reflect the revenue share split between the government entity and Municipal Media. As you review the standard Municipal Media contract, you will notice that all MMS government partners have the right to audit Municipal Media's records to ensure that they are getting an accurate and timely distribution of funds related to advertising.

Sales and Marketing

Since Municipal Media only makes money if advertising is sold, clearly, marketing and sales is a major element of the MMS effort. The MMS team consists of both direct sales people, independent sales agents, and network aggregators all who are working to maximize the price and quantity of advertising sold on every MMS government partner's site. The MMS sales and marketing effort includes the development of website specific media kits/sales brochures, direct marketing campaigns to local advertisers, ongoing marketing interaction with national advertising agencies involved in multi-market advertising purchases, and prompt follow up to all leads generated by site inquiry. Our sales organization looks at itself as an extension of your brand and your reputation. We do everything to emphasize the strengths of your visitor demographic and traffic characteristics and work with you to continue to improve site revenue and consumer response. Check out a few of our media kits/sales brochures: