Turn on the TV, open a magazine or get online and chances are you’re going to see advertisements inviting you to visit Kansas City, Des Moines, and South Dakota this summer. A common question from Omaha residents is, “Why don’t we see any Omaha commercials?” The answer is: “If you lived in any of those other places you would.” In fact, you’d be seeing and hearing more about Omaha than ever before.

Typically Omaha commercials inviting people to visit run during the summer travel season. This year families in Kansas City, Des Moines, and Sioux Falls will be seeing ads during the spring, summer, fall, and winter. The nine-month-long, multi-media campaign will expose people to the Omaha invitation a total of 138 million times.

And those millions of invitations take many different forms. There are Omaha regional television advertisements on more than two dozen broadcast and cable networks, radio ads on 10 stations, and online ads on hundreds of websites such as People.com, ABCNews.com, AOL.com, and HGTV.com, just to name a few.

The Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau is collaborating with Southwest Airlines to advertise on its new Wi-Fi portal to complement four months of print ads in Southwest’s in-flight magazine. This means that when Southwest flyers (more than three million a month) log-on to the Internet mid-air they will see Omaha, and when they open the magazine they will see Omaha. (Gotta love a captive audience!)

The Omaha CVB is also partnering with both Orbitz and Expedia to promote special hotel offers. Last year, a three-month campaign on Orbitz increased Omaha hotel bookings through the site by 44 percent. This spring the Omaha CVB invited radio personalities from different regional cities to experience the city with their families. Those same radio folks are now on-the-air talking about their trip and encouraging others to visit.

The expanded advertising campaign allows Omaha to extend the invitation to more and more people, millions and millions of times.

Questions or comments? E-mail us at [email protected]. Dana Markel, Executive DirectorOmaha Convention & Visitors Bureau