Vibrant Media blends the best of both search & display advertising. It allows an advertiser to target the content within a publisher page on a keyword basis and upon a user initiated interaction with the green double-underlined keyword within the content of the page, a graphic display ad appears that allows rich media content to be inserted instantly.
Vibrant & ShopLocal have come together to form a joint partnership that brings the weekly ad to growing in-text advertising marketplace
ShopLocal has officially partnered with Vibrant to take the best of each others offerings to market. This means that the localized promotional content that ShopLocal brings can be distributed on a contextual targeted basis which will drive traffic back into the relevant area of a retailer’s online weekly ad (SmartCircular) site. This hybrid ad format can be bought on an CPC (Cost Per Click) or a CPV (Cost Per View) basis directly through the Vibrant sales channels.
Here is a mocked up sample of what the flash based Vibrant Media ads look like. This ad for example would be triggered by the keyword 'sunglasses'.
Maybe the simplest way to understand what this new partnership and localized in-text ads are is to imagine if a Pointroll PaperBoy rich media display ad had a baby with a Google AdSense paid search ad, their offspring would be a Vibrant Media Localized In-Text ad.
This joint partnership offering is a great blur of search and display ads. If offers:
- Localized content: Since weekly ad content is what is being featured within the Vibrant Media ads, the ad serving needs to be sensitive to the user’s geography so that the right version of the weekly ad content can be displayed
- Dynamic updating: The keywords that are targeted, the ad content and the landing pages are all automatically synced every day to ensure that only live and active weekly ad content is being used to content keyword target and populate the user initiated in-text ads.
- Keyword targeting: Vibrant Media’s system works by going after specific keywords contained within a great network of publisher’s content within a specific geo-location
- Product specific landing pages: The product featured within the ad is connected to the same item within the weekly ad site
- Rich reporting: Able to measure metrics such as the number of users that interacted with the ad and the number of users that clicked thru from the ad to the online weekly ad site
Chalk another successful new partner product launch up! Its great to see the trade publications pick up the story that is contained within Kaboodle’s recent integration of the Target Weekly Ad within their social shopping community. The combination of social and local really is the future of retail advertising. This is a great early example of how this may look with forward looking feature like sharing, commenting and shopping list making.
The Target Weekly Ad just keeps popping up everywhere! This advertiser
One question that I keep getting is what is the difference between a mobile web site that is built using the WAP standards vs. a more modern mobile optimized web site? Instead of getting into the technical differences, how about a visual comparison…
For this case study, we’ll be looking at Moosejaw’s, an outdoor apparel and equipment retailer, mobile web sites. They actually have two (2) different mobile sites live simultaneously. One that conforms to the older WAP standards and a recently released mobile optimized site. Let’s compare…
1. WAP Version – http://moosejaw.mobi/
WAP Version - Home or main entry page
WAP Version - Browse by category results page
2. Mobile Optimized Web Site – http://m.moosejaw.com/
Mobile Optimized Version - Home or main entry page
Mobile Optimized Version - Store locator page
So what’s different between these two versions? To name a few….
- The way to get to the sites is different – m.domainname.com vs. domainname.mobi There are two schools of thought out there on which one to do. Instead of arguing, I would suggest that you do both and increase the chances of a user finding your mobile friendly web site
- Use of images – WAP sites tend to be very stark and rely very heavily on text and basic HTML formatting. Mobile optimized sites use images much more extensively
- Navigation: WAP sites often have numeric shortcuts that trigger actions. So instead of scrolling your mouse cursor or touching a button or link, a user can simply use their numeric keypad to jump directly to that hyperlinked page
- Page Weight: A WAP site tends to be very, very, very lightweight in overall Kb page size. Since many mobile phones have slow browser, non-powerful processors, clunky web browsers and sluggish Internet connections, keeping the overall page weight down can make a lot of sense
The ShopLocal development teams could not be as productive and collaborative without the help of a great agile lifecycle management tool. For these functions, we rely heavily upon a great SaaS partner named Rally Software. It really is fun to have a great relationship with one’s vendors, where they transcend and become one’s partners. That is the case with the Rally team. From training our team in the dark arts of Agile product development to always asking for product feedback to helping us learn and configure their toolset, the Rally folks have been there for ShopLocal.
It is fun to see the success that ShopLocal has had becoming part of the best practice guide for others interested in using Rally to guide their agile development of software.
Rally has been conducting their Agile Success Tour across the country and have asked ShopLocal to participate in their Chicago stop. Our own Brendan Flynn, Director of Project Management at ShopLocal, will be part of a panel led by Israel Gat discussing Agile success stories from companies as diverse as ShopLocal, BMC Software and Memex Technology Ltd. If you are in the Chicago area on October 15, sign-up to register, it’s free and will cover a wide range of topics and give participants real-world examples and techniques to bring back to their own organizations. The event consists of 3 parts… A panel, breakout sessions on various topics such as communicating to executives & metrics and a Q & A session with panel members and Rally coaches such as Jean Tabaka and Rachel Weston.
Here is the full press release that went out as well as some info on the regional events called the Agile Success Tour.
“Agile Leader Offers Real-Life Agile Implementation Stories from Companies like AOL, BMC Software, Boeing, Constant Contact, Getty Images, Investment Technology Group (ITG), Memex, Microsoft-Mobile, Sermo, ShopLocal, Symphono and thePlatform
BOULDER, Colo.–(Business Wire)–
Rally®, the leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM), today announced the expansion of the Agile Success Tour, a series of interactive half-day seminars for software and IT executives who are currently adopting or considering adopting Agile development practices. The free seminars will be held in Seattle on October 1, Chicago on October 15 and London, England on October 29. The Boston event was held on September 17….”
The method to the madness for ShopLocal's agile development teams comes from Rally
Just getting back into the swing of things from getting back from Vegas last week and have lots of interesting news to get out on the blog over the next few days. However in the mean time, here are some key insights that were shared at the Shop.org Annual Summit 2009 conference:
- By far the best online retailing show, both in the quality of sessions, # of retailers attending and supporting partner/vendor ecosystem.
First from the Chariman and CEO of Macy*s
- In regards to Macys.com + Bloomingdales.com, these two sites generate $1 billion in online sales, but an additional $5 billion+ in store sales influenced. (Macy*s total revenue is $24B for reference)
- A multi-channel Macy’s customer is worth…
- 2X more than just a store only customer
- 50% more (1.5 times more) to the stores than just a store only customer
- Macy’s has found that $1 spent online influenced $5.77 in additional store purchases within first 10 days (Dunhumby analysis)
- Sees over 3X conversion for those consumers that go into a product finder experience online
- Macy*s nationalized all operations back to NYC, but created 65 “zones” of local decisioning at the market level so as to still receive intel on the local level
- Has over 300,000 product reviews live on Macys.com
- The online and store sides of the business each have dedicated staff that both report to the same person (the CMO)
Forrester shared some stats such as:
- 22% average open rate for emails
- 0.4% click thru rate on social media ads
eBay has some of the best insights around eCommerce such as:
- eCommerce growing from its current 5% of offline sales all the way up to 15% to 20% of offline sales over the next 5+ years
- Forecasting that up to 40% of all online access will come from mobile devices within the next 2-3 years
- From the eBay iPhone app alone, this app has driven over $400 million in volume for eBay
- eBay has over 170 million items live at any point in time, with only 10% – 12% of these items being structured data
- Over 75% of eBay’s traffic comes from organic sources, but they do buy over 20 million keywords from Google for example
- The largest seller on eBay sells over $40 million worth of stuff
- Auctions at this point only account for 25% of all volume on eBay
Resources Interactive offered up:
- The US household on average is making less money: $50,303 in 2009 from $51,295 in 1998 (US Census)
- Folks are getting thrifty: Sales at Goodwill stores open at least a year ago rose 7.1% in the first three months of 2009 over the same period a year earlier
- ROBO shopping is a behavior that youngsters are learning: 69% of young people now research all purchases before they buy anything
- Deals are red hot: Coupon sites have been the 2nd most visited category on the Internet, behind job sites, for about a year (eMarketer May 2009)
- The concept of buying branded products for many digital moms is dead: According to TNS Retail Forward , about 42% of moms are buying store brands all the time
- ROBO shopping overall is the only way consumers are shopping now. Its not a trend its status quot: Some retailers are reporting up to 98% of in store shoppers report that they have already pre-shopped online before hand according to BIGResearch and Resources Interactive survey from August 2009
(4.50 out of 5)
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(4.00 out of 5)
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