With about 5,400 followers on Facebook, another 2,700 subscribers to our weekly newsletter and tens of thousands of monthly views of our website, Mid Bay News has plenty of people from the Niceville and Valparaiso areas looking at our reporting every month. Add in the thousands of people who see our videos and we continue to reach more and more people monthly.

We understand that we are new, and small – but we also know that our upside is huge. Niceville, Valparaiso, Bluewater Bay, Eglin Air Force Base and Freeport have about 50,000 people to advertise, with more people moving here daily. Advertising with us now allows you to reach those people in a personal way that shows you and your business care about more than a sale – you care about the community which supports your business and want to make a long-term commitment to it.

There are really two different types of corporate media that people usually mean when they say this: either international social media and digital media companies like Facebook (or Meta), Twitter, Google and other massive companies – or venture capital firms that have bought up and picked media outlets like local TV and Newspapers to the bone. 

Digital Media

Facebook, Twitter, Google and other internet-based marketing certainly have a place in any good company’s marketing mix – especially if they are a locally-based business in the Niceville area. Most, if not all, businesses that decide to advertise with Mid Bay News should also strongly consider advertising through other digital means as well. Advertising with Mid Bay News does give one key advantage over other digital advertising – the ability to be seen as an authority in one’s field. As an advertiser with Mid Bay News, clients are often asked for quotes and insight when their skill set is relevant to the story on hand. This allows clients to generate respect in the minds of readers so that when a purchase decision comes up – the client is seen as a respectable, local authority in their field. 

Corporate Media

Take a moment to pull up a local television station’s website. Go buy a ‘local’ newspaper. Watch the five o’clock news. Watch carefully to see how many, if any, stories in these outlets are about our area or even about something in Okaloosa County. More often than not, the stories are clickbaity headlines from Tampa or Timbuktu. If local readers or viewers in our area don’t care about the story – or feel like they got tricked into clicking on the headline, will they even see your ad? If they see your ad, will they respond positively after they’ve just been tricked into reading something that doesn’t matter to their lives?

Our Publisher, Christopher, spent years in corporate news – he knows that this is what has happened to our beloved local outlets, and he wants to change it with Mid Bay News. He believes local residents and advertisers deserve local, quality journalism – not rehashed clickbait from somewhere else. Advertising with Mid Bay News makes sure that your ads are seen by people who care about this community as much as you do and that when they see your ads they view you as someone with a stake in their community – not someone trying to sell them something. 

Many potential advertisers ask us, ‘why doesn’t Mid Bay News have a physical product, like a newspaper or magazine?” Two reasons. 

Print deadlines for a newspaper or magazine cut both ways for a small organization like Mid Bay News. On one hand, Mid Bay News must publish at a certain time and hour. It would be similar to having an up-to-the-minute news show on cable which was filmed the day before. Information cannot be updated, developments to a story can’t be added, and extra manpower is needed to ensure the current volume of stories is met. Instead of spending time researching, interviewing and reporting, we would end up setting type, formatting pages, and other mundane tasks that don’t add benefit to the reader or the advertiser. 

Secondly, the cost of print is prohibitive and would significantly increase our overhead – which we would immediately have to pass on to our advertisers. That cost would cull the efficacy of your advertising budget and dissolve any gains you would acquire from advertising with a digital-first product like Mid Bay News. Also, people read the news on their phones. 86% of news consumers got news from a smartphone or tablet, ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ as opposed to television (68%) or Printed Publications (32%), according to a Pew Research Poll conducted in 2021.

Yes. Reporters and freelancers for Mid Bay News have at least eight years of experience in and around journalism. We also offer opportunities to High School Students to write feature stories, which are heavily scrutinized to ensure accuracy. This allows us to raise up the next generation of fact-based journalists for our area. Additionally, Mid Bay News currently holds a SEM Rush Authority Score of 39. This is the highest Authority Score for an independent news website in the Niceville-Valparaiso area. Websites with similar scores include the City of Niceville’s website (40) and Valparaiso’s website (38). 

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) says the best time to advertise is during a recession or tightening time in the economy. Why, because your message is a lot more likely to get through. “Although it is wise to contain costs,” HBR notes that, “Although it’s wise to contain costs, failing to support brands or examine core customers’ changing needs can jeopardize performance over the long term. Companies that put customers’ needs under the microscope, take a scalpel rather than a cleaver to the marketing budget, and nimbly adjust strategies, tactics and product offering in response to shifting demand are more likely than other to flourish both during and after a recession.”