CityVoter Pitching Brands on Local

CityVoter, which has been a co-branded, city guide and content/community partner for local media affiliates, and more recently a direct destination, is doing something very interesting as it evolves. Consistent with my earlier posts about local and demographic targeting, the site is pitching national brands and other entities on local targeting (contests, local promotions) but with a twist.

The voting on CityVoter offers high levels of engagement with local (and vertical) audiences. In addition, CityVoter’s registration data offers demographic profiles of users. Hence advertisers get access to specific, engaged users (voters) in local markets. People complain about how social networking isn’t working for advertisers. But this appears to be a different case.

The proof of concept was its relationship with Exercise TV for the lauch of that cable channel:

Between January 28 and March 23, ExerciseTV and CityVoter invite fitness professionals and their clients or friends to nominate themselves or their favorite trainer at www.exercisetv.tv/toptrainer.

And here were the results:

Between January 28 and March 23, nearly 10,000 people voted for their favorite Boot camp gym, cardio instructor, dance instructor, general fitness trainer, kickboxing instructor, personal trainer, pilates instructor or yoga instructor. Eight trainers were awarded the title of Top Trainer, one in each of the listed categories. The contest drew almost 100,000 unique visitors to the ExerciseTV site.

The company is now working with other brands in similar ways. In addition to national promotions, the site continues to work with local media partners to capture SMB ad dollars.

The voting concept is a very smart one. Even though other sites offer “best of” lists and voting, this is core to the CityVoter concept and helps drive participation by a broader number of users.