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How Los Angeles County Is Boosting Broadband Subsidy Enrollment

February 15, 2022

By Susan Walters, CETF Senior Vice President

We’re excited to share with you the results of an advertising campaign that the California Emerging Technology Fund developed and Los Angeles County joined as co-branded partner, resulting in outstanding growth in enrollments.

We launched advertising in the first 3 weeks in December 2021, and saw Emergency Broadband Benefit sign-ups increase by 43% month over month.  The chart below illustrates the progress, adding 13,500 more sign-ups than November and turning around the downward trend we saw earlier in the fall.  The enrollment data is provided by USAC.  With combined CETF and LA County funds, the campaign spent about $330,000, or a very cost effective $7.65 per household.  Our campaign collateral is available for easy replication and customization — and keep in mind media advertising in most other markets is going to be less costly than it is in LA.

LA County EBB Enrollment Up 43%. After a 3 week targeted as campaign, LA County EBB enrollment in December increased 43% in a single month. December bucked a downward trend, and posted one of the highest totals since June.

Advertising in language and in culture is key.  We developed a :30 second TV ad.  The campaign channels – TV, radio, print and social media – advertised both a 24/7 call center and the Internet For All Now (IFAN) website, with the link:  Internetforallnow.org/applytoday, which provides information and a direct link to the USAC subsidy application.  The distributed call center consists of community organizations throughout California and a 24/7 call screening service.  The ads were translated into several languages.

Advertising was conducted in-language and in-culture in targeted communities. Images of four fliers in English, Spanish, Thai and Chinese.

The results:  The call center before the pilot, using just CETF ad dollars, had received an average of 1,400 calls/month.  By comparison, during the December ad pilot, it received 5,013.  The IFAN website previously had sent 2,200 people to the USAC subsidy application but in December sent 21,145.

December Advertising Drove Outreach.

Advertising was targeted at households in high-need zip codes.  Some LA County departments emailed or texted county services clients and the county handed out 457K printed fliers to eligible participants, in locations including holiday toy-giveaways and food distribution sites.

Earned media also was part of the effort: News from the LA County-sponsored press event was carried in 38 outlets, many of which were community news outlets.

Ethnic media outlets were critical for outreach. Image of logos of ethnic media outlets in LA.

For more information, please contact Susan Walters at susan.walters@cetfund.org.

To access campaign collateral contact Nadine Hugg at nadine.hugg@cetfund.org.