The KCBS Helper App — and The Smoke Ring, its monthly paper — is built for one crowd: the people who cook, judge and run KCBS contests. They come here to look up their own scores, scout their rivals and read who won. If you sell to them, this is about as direct as it gets.
You clicked an ad space on The Smoke Ring (2015 annual edition) — it’s highlighted below.
What the site covers (every sanctioned KCBS contest with published results)
Teams on record
38,177
each with a career page
Scored contests
5,485
every category, every place
Results since
2012
every season, to this weekend
States & provinces
83
where the contests ran
Smoke Ring editions
165
one for every month of results
Who it’s built for
Competition teams checking their results, their form and their power ranking — the pitmasters who buy sauce, rub, injection and wood every weekend they cook.
Certified judges following the tables they sit at and the classes coming up.
Three run on every page of the app — every team’s page, every contest’s results, the rankings, the calendar — and four more in The Smoke Ring, on the current edition and every back issue. Every one is sold directly — no ad network, no auction, just you and the person who runs the site. A space can carry more than one sponsor: each page load shows one of them, in turn.
On every page of the app
The space you clicked
Top banner
Every page of the app, straight under the page title
Size
728 × 90 px, and 300 × 250 on phones
Shown on
Desktop and phones, on screen as the page loads
The first thing under the name of the team, contest or ranking a cook came to look up — in view before they have scrolled an inch, on every page of the app.
Desktop and phones: one to three a page, by how long the page is
Set between the tables and charts people actually read — a team’s results, a contest’s scores, the power rankings — spaced a screen or more apart so each one gets seen.
The biggest space in the paper: a full column beside the roll of every perfect 180 scored that month — the part of the page cooks read for their own name. Room for a product, a headline and a real pitch.
Pick a space and press its button. Your email opens with a short form already drafted, and the space you picked already filled in.
Tell us who you are and what you sell. Company, website, the region you want to reach, the dates you have in mind.
Ross replies personally to talk it through — the artwork, the timing and anything else you have in mind, including ideas that aren’t on this page — and sets you up with your own advertiser account.
Book it yourself. In your account you upload your artwork, pick your spaces and dates, and get your invoice on the spot.
Watch it work. Once your ads are live, your account shows how many times they were shown, seen and clicked, day by day and on which parts of the site.