In an age when online advertising is growing up to 30 percent every year, two of the country’s leading online resources for paddlers have joined forces to help grow the sport, better serve the industry and give advertisers a combined, cost-effective platform to present their brand message to the largest audience possible.
Boatertalk, the nation’s leading forum and chat room for paddlers, has joined forces with Paddling Life, one of the industry’s leading online content providers, to bring their collective viewership the best of both worlds. “The alliance combines the power of paddlesport’s best forum and online editorial for one commanding presence,” says BoaterTalk Director of Development Mark Boumansour. “Viewers go to Paddling Life to read about paddlesports, and they go to BoaterTalk to talk about it. This will let our collective advertisers have the largest captive audience at their fingertips every day with the most powerful and affordable buy in the industry.”
Under terms of the agreement, each site will cross-pollinate the other throughout its pages, creating an interchangeable link between the two entities. And advertisers will see their messages rotate seamlessly through both sites, providing the most cost-effective marketing tool in the industry.
Established in 1996 by software engineer Eric Princen, BoaterTalk has evolved into a huge worldwide subscription-based community generating 43,000 unique visitors and more than 14 million page views each month. Reaching more paddlers around the globe every day than any other resource in the industry, it gives users a resource to search live information, discuss ideas, research products, build profiles, plan trips, find partners, swap gear, respond to surveys and more. Paddling Life, founded by a team of industry veterans, keeps its fingers firmly on the sport’s pulse, providing viewers with updates, reviews, profiles, news and video links, photo galleries, contests and more. With a combined 59,000 register users and over 450,000 daily page views, together they create a dynamic team that share the same core values: to support and grow paddlesports, and keep the sport’s stoke alive.
“It’s a great synergy,” says Paddling Life founder Eugene Buchanan. “BoaterTalk is a great forum without an emphasis on content, and we have great content, but without a forum. By leveraging our two strengths, the package will give users a one-stop Web resource for everything they need while providing our partners with an extremely affordable marketing tool. It should be a win-win for both of our organizations, as well as the entire paddling community.”