Where will my advert be placed on a council website?

Your ad will be shown right across the council’s webpages in the ‘leaderboard’ advertising space across the top. This is a great position in which to promote your business. It could also be shown as a square advert alongside webpage content (“MPU”). Your advert will be shown in rotation with other quality advertising.

How many people will see my advert?

Once your advertising campaign is up and running, we will send you a link to a dashboard, updated each week, that shows how your advert is performing in terms of impressions (see more below) and how many people have clicked on your ad. These figures will depend on how many residents live in a council’s catchment area. We can let you know how many views a council website gets on average each month and that will give you a good indication in advance of your potential audience. Just contact us and we’ll be happy to give you this information.

Is there a minimum spend on advertising?

Yes. The way we sell advertising across local council websites is on a CPM basis. This refers to the set cost for every 1,000 times an advert appears on any device (laptop, tablet or mobile). We charge £10 per 1,000 of these “impressions”. We set our minimum spend at £100 for 10,000 impressions of your ad.

How long will my advertising budget last?

We ask you to choose a start and end date for your advertising campaign. We then work out the number of times your ad can be shown each day to give you the total number of impressions you have purchased within this time frame. However, some councils (especially large authorities) generate more impressions in a shorter amount of time than others. So, there is a chance your campaign ends slightly earlier or later than the dates you’ve chosen. But we’ll always make sure your ad gets the number of overall impressions you have paid for.

Who is behind CAN Local?

CAN Local is run by CAN Digital, a company which has been working closely with local government to help councils earn revenue from advertising for many years. Our Council Advertising Network was developed especially for the public sector and around 50 UK local councils are currently part of this network.

Are there any restrictions on what can be advertised?

As you might expect, we need to ensure that all advertising on council websites is appropriate for a public sector environment. For this reason, we do not accept advertising within certain categories – gambling, adult themes, alcohol, politics or payday or high-interest loans.

In addition, there may be advertising which individual councils decide is not appropriate for their residents. This might be for specific cultural reasons or because of clashes with their own commercial enterprises. We will let you know if your advert is not approved by the council(s) you want to advertising with and will give you their reason and a refund.

Are there options for a larger advertising budget?

If you have £2,000 or more to spend, we can put you in touch with our advertising sales team who will be able to advise you on different options for a larger budget. These include different formats of advert like our exclusive ‘iBar’ that is anchored to the bottom of the screen.

Who do I contact if I have a question or problem with CAN Local?

It’s best to send your question via our contact page so one of the team can look into your issue and get back to you with an answer. We operate usual office hours, Monday to Friday, but if you highlight a problem we need to fix urgently, we will get back to you as soon as we can.