Services - Council Advertising Network

Our Services

Your campaign will reach the right audiences through our Citizen Reach™ paid media service. Whether you want to encourage behaviour change, drive service take-up or recruit staff.

CAN’s Citizen Reach™ service includes:

Campaign planning: based on a decade of expertise across a huge variety of public sector services.
Paid media-buying: across the websites, apps, video and social media channels most used by your target audience for the lowest cost per outcome. We also secure offline advertising – where appropriate for your campaign – for less.
Targeting tactics: we reach specific demographics, geolocations and groups (based on personal interests, job types, income and more).
Search profiling: so your ads appear when your target audience puts key terms into Google and Bing.
Optimisation: of the best-performing creatives, channels and tactics as your campaign is live to get the most from your budget.
Reporting: an online dashboard, updated weekly, to track your campaign’s performance and evaluate it against service outcomes.
Campaign management: from a dedicated account handler. All CAN campaign managers have years of experience working within and/or with public sector teams and will be on hand to offer advice, answer queries and trouble-shoot issues.
Safety and security: our in-built filters and monitoring mean your ads won’t appear on inappropriate channels.
Data consent: compliance is automatically covered by our ad tech.

Partner Services

CAN has long-established partnerships with successful agencies who are also passionate about working with public sector organisations.

For campaign services you need that are not handled directly by CAN nor in-house, we can bring one of our partner agencies on board.

Add-on campaign services that can be provided through our partners include:

Campaign strategy
Concepts and messaging
Creative design
Social listening and social media management

We give local authorities the tools to boost their communications budgets.

Council Advertising Network

CAN generates income for local authorities across the UK through our Council Advertising Network.

We sell ad space safely and securely on council websites and microsites to quality and appropriate brands using ad tech developed especially for the public sector.
The ad space can also be used to promote a council’s own campaigns across the whole website. And to give local small businesses access to online marketing.
Ad tech and reporting on council campaign ads is free of charge.

Councils can reinvest the income generated by ads to boost their communications budgets to get:

A 50% share of income paid directly.
A 75% share of income when converted to media-buying credits for our Citizen Reach™ service.

Dozens of tourism, job and transport websites in the public sector (including Visit England and Transport for London) also use our advertising technology.

Council media estate: improving revenue outcomes

The council media estate is made up of all the assets it owns that could be used to raise income from advertising or sponsorship. This includes the council website, print and email. It also includes out-of-home assets.

This estate has the potential to deliver multiple benefits for the council, residents and local businesses.

CAN’s adtech and media estate services include:

Free adtech on your website: a fully managed service to source, place and manage safe, council-appropriate advertising on council websites and microsites.
Free adtech on your newsletters: creating ad space as part of your digital communications with residents and businesses so you can promote your campaigns for increased click-through.
Auditing your council’s out-of-home media estate: using current benchmarking to evaluate its real value – in particular, 6-sheet poster and digital sites, roundabout signage, lamppost banners and large format (48 and 96-sheets).
Making recommendations for best value procurement: of current assets and negotiating improved deals.
Identifying new opportunities: for assets including public and commercial partnerships.

Good user experience (UX) is the difference between achieving your campaign outcomes and not.

A campaign landing page designed so key information and calls to action – like filling in a form – are easy to find.
Incorporating tech to tell you where people have clicked from and whether they complete the call to action.
The ability to retarget people with your campaign messages across other channels.
Nurturing people beyond the initial contact stage for more involved campaigns like foster carer recruitment.

CAN’s UX service includes:

Website development: from a single campaign landing page to a whole microsite. We use content design principles to deliver a positive user-centred browsing experience. With a straightforward contact form or download button to maximise audience engagement.
Microsite hosting: ongoing support can include maintenance, updates and Google Analytics reporting.
Ad tech: added to your existing organisation’s website or selected webpages – or our bespoke microsite or landing page – so you can retarget campaigns to your audience across other websites, apps and social media. The tech will also enable insight-gathering.
Enquiry Management System: specifically developed for council-owned foster carer recruitment services. User-friendly, it ensures all enquiries are serviced to a consistently high standard for a better customer journey and improved outcomes. Find out more on our Foster Carer Recruitment webpage.

Partner Services

Add-on services for improved UX that can be provided through our partners include:

Email marketing: an email design and campaign management solution to improve response rates and save time – including nurturing campaigns that take contacts through different communication journeys depending on how they interact.
AI audience-building: technology that uses AI learning to create hyper-relevant target audience profiles for campaigns. The process produces a ‘heat map’ of the most relevant postcodes in each area, prioritising them for the campaign activity.