West Hollywood is a city of 1.89 square miles with 34,000 residents whose population triples on the average weekend when visitors come to dine, shop and play. An advertiser wanting to target those residents and visitors and people in nearby neighborhoods has a few options.

Here’s how to choose a medium that targets the audience you want to reach, so that you make the best use of your ad dollars:
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ADVERTISING IN PRINT

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Unfortunately, there are no print publications that target West Hollywood. The Los Angeles Times west zone covers West Hollywood but stretches all the way to Santa Monica and Malibu. So unless you want to pay to tell people in those faraway places about your products or services, you’ll be wasting your money. Similarly, LA Weekly offers no zoned distribution targeting the greater West Hollywood area. And neither does the Independent, which is variously called the West Hollywood Independent and the LA Independent, reflecting the vast geographic area in which it is distributed.

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ADVERTISING ONLINE

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In comparing online sites, best source of data is Google Analytics, which gives a 30-day report of a website’s traffic. Unfortunately many sites (unlike WEHOville.com) don’t provide screenshots of their Google traffic to prospective advertisers (the only way to know that the numbers you are getting are real.) The next best source would be Quantcast.com, of which WEHOville.com is a member. But other West Hollywood sites are not, so their data can’t be found. That leaves advertisers with Amazon’s Alexa.com, an analytic tool that provides a rough comparison of site traffic. It ranks Google.com, of course, as No. 1. If you are considering buying an online ad, check Alexa because the rankings shift over time. In other words, the information listed below will change.  Here’s how as of April 21 other websites that target West Hollywood or LA County’s gay community rank on Alexa:

WeHoChamber.com This website of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, has no Alexa ranking, which suggests it has very few if any readers. The chamber’s EatShopPlayWeHo.com business directory also doesn’t show up in Alexa rankings. One page on the Chamber’s website says its website has 2,000 unique viewers a month. Other pages talk about readers, which isn’t a very clear term in analyzing web traffic.  It could mean unique viewers, it could mean the number of pages viewed (areader may view more than one).  Suffice it to say, the Chamber’s lack of an Alexa ranking tells you what you need to know.

WeHoDaily.com This website, whose news last was updated several months ago, has no Alexa ranking.

WeHoNews.com WeHo News, in business for seven years, for a while was updated only once a month. Now it posts a story every day or so. According to Alexa.com, WeHoNews.com ranks 99,656 among websites ranked by Alexa in the United States.

WEHOville.com WEHOville.com, launched in September 2012, has more readers than any other medium serving West Hollywood and nearby communities. Google Analytics reports that we have 102,000 visitors, a number that continues to grow, and that they look at 223,000 pages. WEHOville offers a broad range of content including arts and culture, dining, nightlife, gay life, local sports and politics and events. Usually six new stories are added on the average weekday, giving readers a reason to check WEHOville.com often.

Advertisers seeking to reach gay consumers, who make up 40 percent of West Hollywood’s population and a substantial portion of its visitors, can also consider FrontiersLA.com, the website of Frontiers magazine. Alexa ranks it as No. 39,729.  Given that WEHOville.com covers gay issues,  it also is a good option for reaching the LA gay audience and offers more traffic.