NASCAR: Roush Racing and Northern Light Extend Partnership to Bring New Sponsors to NASCAR
16 May 2000
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
Innovative Joint-Promotional Program Provides Access into Auto Racing
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C.--The Information Superhighway just added an on-ramp from NASCAR as Internet advertising has entered the new millennium. Roush Racing announced today a unique partnership with Northern Light Technology, Incorporated [www.NorthernLight.com], the award winning business-to-business search engine, to bring potential sponsors into the fastest growing sport in the nation.
The promotional program, developed originally for the Indy Racing Northern Light Series, offers advertisers on NorthernLight.com the opportunity to gain additional value from their advertising budgets. For every dollar of advertising spent on the site, Northern Light will pay half to fund the sponsorship of a NASCAR team through Roush Racing.
This interactive marketing program effectively lowers the cost of a NASCAR sponsorship by using already budgeted Internet advertising dollars. "This program gives potential sponsors an excellent foray into the sport of NASCAR," said Geoff Smith, president of Roush Racing. "Companies will be able to reap the benefit of their investment two fold. This allows someone who is on the fence, in the terms of sponsorship, to look at the value-added their investment is getting from their advertising dollar."
Northern Light came aboard Roush Racing's team in 2000 by sponsoring Jeff Burton and the No. 9 NASCAR Busch Series, Grand National Division Ford. In its first four races on the circuit, NorthernLight.com has garnered more than 40 minutes of in-focus television exposure, and combined with Jeff Burton, more than mentions 650 on-air mentions.
"This gives Internet advertisers the chance to get more out of their investment dollar by combining advertising on one of the Web's premier search engine sites with a NASCAR sponsorship," said David Seuss, CEO of Northern Light. "After seeing the success that Northern Light has experienced from our sponsorship of the Roush Racing No. 9 car in the NASCAR Busch Series, we feel that this incentive may be enough to involve other sponsors in the sport. The resources Roush Racing has allocated to Jeff Burton for our limited schedule Busch deal are amazing, and the off-track results are proof - as demonstrated by the increases in our site traffic since we teamed up with Jeff Burton and Roush Racing."
Northern Light is widely recognized as a leading search engine for business use, and, with more than 225 million Web pages and 6,400 premium full-text sources previously available only to subscribers of online services, Northern Light is among the world's most powerful search engines. It has a large, upscale, managerial and professional audience that is ideal for companies that want to advertise their brand and products on the Internet. Northern Light has the ability to target end users in a variety of business categories from business and health, to IT and travel. Companies with Web advertising budgets can use this interactive marketing program as a resource to bring their company one step closer to sponsorship.
The partnership also furthers Roush Racing's position as the home of the "dot coms," including Family Click, Emazing and OnSite on the Nos. 16, 17 and 99 Winston Cup Fords, respectively. Roush Racing is the largest motorsports team in the world with nine teams in NASCAR's three major series: Mark Martin, Jeff Burton (based in Mooresville, N.C.), Kevin Lepage, Chad Little and Matt Kenseth (Concord, N.C.) in the Winston Cup Series; Martin and Burton in the Busch Series; and Greg Biffle and Kurt Busch (Livonia, Mich.) in the Craftsman Truck Series.
Text provided by Kevin Radvany
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