Bulletin - Local television websites suffer from severe clutter.

Okay, so it's not exactly breaking news but it is true - many TV sites are packed with a preponderance of ads, many of which shake and skimmy but communicate very little. Sites like these give the vague appearance of Times Square on News Years Eve.

WNBC (NBC, New York City) on the other hand has taken an entirely different tack.

The WNBC home page is a model of minimalism, sporting just one "regulation" banner ad - a solitary 300X250 display banner above the fold.

One of WNBC's advertisers, Park City is making good use of the opportunity with a highly engaging online campaign.

It's the height of the ski season and Park City is looking to make it easy for New York residents to choose Park City for their annual Western ski vacations.

Their offer - take a morning flight to Park City and arrive in time to ski the afternoon for free. The promotion permits consumers to convert their airline boarding passes into a same-day lift tickets to any of the three Park City resorts.

The clever ad tagline says it all - "It's not heaven - heaven's not that easy to get into."

As part of the WNBC sponsorship, Park City also maintains two permanent banner/links on the "Our Partners" homepage section.

One of the small banners links to the aforementioned special offer; the other banner links to an online contest for a three day/four night ski vacation to Park City.

To further engage prospective snowbirds, Park City has even posted a challenging online downhill ski game on the site. Try it.

ONLINE SPIN

Park City undoubtably is getting a lot of bang for its online buck. One only has to take a look at the various components of this campaign to understand how effective an online advertiser at its best can be.

Park City engages and entices consumers in a number of ways:

• With a promise to put east coast consumers on the Utah slopes the same day.
• By making it worth their while to do so with a free lift tickets
• By offering a free ski vacation to some lucky user. In turn, Park City can use that database of contestants for later marketing campaigns).
• By providing a fun, challenging online ski game to further interact with the consumer.
  

The campaign further benefits from WNBC's uncluttered home page environment. As the only sponsor on the page, Park City enjoys an unsually high "share of voice."

(Disclaimer: The author is employed by Broadcast Interactive Media, who hosts the WNBC website).