Pointroll’s AdControl is a very powerful tool. So much so, that it becomes somewhat difficult to explain and talk about to others at times. However within the below interactive demo, this complexity issue is solved. Basically it allows business rules to be created that give advertisers more control of the content within their rich media ad unit.
A rule might be when a user fitting the profile of “Type 1″ comes in contact with a PaperBoy ad that is about to render, always make sure to show a background image of a tool shed, use a call to action that includes the copy “Roll over” and to display a bag of all purpose fertilizer. Or if you are a visual person, display this exact combination within the ad unit as follows:
Input: User Type1. Output: Tool shed background image + "Roll Over" call to action copy + "Vigoro Fertilizer" product
Pretty darn cool. The combinations are endless. However the real fun begins when one starts to bring in publisher supplied BT data such as gender, age and interest(s) of the user. Then these types of rules become very powerful once you layer in the auto optimization factors that the system (e.g., AdControl) offer so that the most successful (which can be custom configured) ad combinations receive the highest amount of impressions.
This is a very visual way of showing how different pieces of PaperBoy ad content such as the call to action copy, products or the background image can be tied to specific user types (or BT segments in some cases)
You’ve all seen it – the classic “Coexist” bumper sticker on a ex-Phish, now Widespread Panic fan’s car. This same win-win type scenario can absolutely apply to the world of digital advertising within the age old battle between direct response and branding type ads.
Direct response AND branding type ads can live in harmony with one another
Today in MediaPost, Jason Tafler the CEO of Pointroll wrote a cutting article about this exact subject of how adding direct response to rich media can help increase the overall value delivered. In it Mr. Tafler makes the point about:
“Many marketers struggle with creating cutting-edge ads that grab viewers’ attention and drive ROI in a meaningful way. Companies that are getting the most out of their ad buys are using new methods to deeply engage consumers with creative rich-media ads that also incorporate direct-response elements.
These do not have to be standalone strategies; each can play an important role in any comprehensive campaign. Depending on the marketer’s objectives, rich-media campaigns can include features such as data collection, lead generation, printable coupons, targeted product and pricing information, and ticket or product purchasing directly within banner ads, shortening the path to conversion. These capabilities not only provide marketers with more insight into their target audience, but increase consumer interaction time…
…Depending on the campaign, including a direct-response element increases response by 42%, with an additional 3% increase in brand time.”
Specifically to PaperBoy, a localized form of rich media that ShopLocal and Pointroll jointly produce, this has been a key message for years to potential and current advertisers. By using the initial 5 – 10 seconds of a rich media ad to handle advertiser’s messaging, branding and positioning. Then for those users that choose to interact based upon the branding part of the ad, pushing specific product & pricing, data collection (e.g., email addresses) and shopping list creation as the tools that allow an interested consumer to respond. Below is a visual example of this would play out in a rich media PaperBoy ad.
Branding Portion Of The Ad – The Unexpanded Banner
Within this non-user interacted PaperBoy ad state (e.g., the banner), there is branding, messaging and engaging animation sequences happening. So if a user does NOT choose to interact with the ad unit, there is still a great amount of branding value imparted upon the user.
The Direct Response Portion Of The Ad – The Expanded Panel
- Within this user interacted PaperBoy ad state (e.g., the expanded panel), there is a real focus on specific products being offered at specific prices at a specific store location with calls to action to go with it. This is all about getting a user to take a response of either adding the item to their in-store printable shopping list, buy the item online at retailer.com or going into a local store and buying the item offline.
The demographic and behavioral targeting (BT) enhanced PaperBoy ads that run under the Yahoo! white labeled product name of “Smart Ads” are finally certified. This means that there has been a detailed inspection of all the ad metrics, ad performance, ad serving, etc by the Yahoo! Smart Ads team and that Pointroll passed with flying colors. Nice work everyone at Pointroll and ShopLocal in passing this important external validation step.
Here is one interesting tidbit that helps validate why there is a need for dynamic generated and machine optimized rich media ads.
So if there are 300 weekly ad items live at any given point in time, and you needed to pick four specific products to include in a ad, there would be 300 + 299 + 298 + 297 possibilities (which is 1,195 options as each of the four outputs are calculated independently). This is why it is only possible to do this type of optimization via machine optimization and learning.
Here is a nice flashy demo that Yahoo! put together that overviews the SmartAds program
Hooray! ShopLocal and Pointroll are now official partners
The press pickup has been amazing with over 200+ sites running the story, so thank you to all. Here are some soundbites from a few more notable sources:
- ADOTAS: “As a member of Yahoo’s Smart Ads program, PointRoll will leverage Yahoo’s reach and targeting capabilities to provide even more customized, relevant, and scalable rich media campaigns. PointRoll will also leverage its ShopLocal retail advertising program in order to offer enhanced Smart Ads for retail advertisers.”
- ClickZ: “Rich media firm PointRoll will tap Yahoo’s ad-targeting technology to deliver those ads to the right audiences, according to PointRoll CEO Jason Tafler. PointRoll’s ShopLocal retail ads will also be part of the Smart Ads program.” – ClickZ
- WebProNews: “Smart Ads can be used in any vertical industry, but Yahoo says it has seen success within the retail industry, where many advertisers are looking for new ways to reach consumers. Testing Smart Ads with ShopLocal retail ad content has shown improved campaign performance for retail advertisers such as CVS and Kohl’s. These advertisers saw gains in click performance, conversion and overall return on investment.” -
And finally, here is a link to the official release and some generic info on the Yahoo! Smart Ad program overall.
The family of “boys” has grown again. By extending PaperBoy’s reach into Canada, the birth of FlyerBoy has happened. Given the great partnership with Canwest that ShopLocal has established and maintained, this localized rich media display ad product is being introduced and sold mainly by the Canwest sales force to regional sized advertisers.
FlyerBoy at this time includes all of the base PaperBoy features and functionality, but also has a few unique tricks which include:
- Support for Canadian postal codes (as well as Canadian IP addresses)
- Ability to better define the definition of what is considered “local” by allowing an adjustable search radius (in miles) to be set so as to better handle the lower store density levels that Canada has in many parts
Below are a few screen shots of the initial demo ad unit that the Pointroll team just completed.
This is the unexpanded banner part of the FlyerBoy ad unit.
Once a user rolls over the banner, the panel expands and begins to showcase products on sale for a specific retailer.
Mobile display ads have come a long way in a short period of time. It wasn’t that long ago when all mobile ads were essentially really small .gif or .jpg images that had no functionality other than a click thru URL. With the iPhone continuing to increase its massive platform footprint, this is really accelerating and opening up some exciting new possibilities within the mobile display space. So the PaperBoy team has been hard at work building out a mobile version that will be deployed within native iPhone applications.
Here is a link to the mobile PaperBoy prototype ad that the Pointroll team helped create (screen shot below) using CVS weekly ad content pulled in from ShopLocal. Note that this demo sort-of works in a regular web browser, but it only fully works within Safari for iPhone which unlocks many of the features.
PaperBoy has gone mobile! By only using javascript & HTML (and NO flash), the team was able to create a version of a PaperBoy ad that is specifically designed to operate and make use of a number of iPhone specific features.
Here is what the offline in-store shopping list looks like populated with a few items of interest. This can be stored within the session storage that the mobile version of Safari provides for iPhone users.
So if you have an iPhone, try this ad out. Open it up as it has been designed specifically to use the following iPhone features:
- Latitude / longitude based user location service that comes from either the iPhone’s GPS or cell tower proximity
- Slide finger controls that allows a user to scroll though products left and right via touching the screen
- Integration with the iPhone’s one click to call feature for the user’s current/closest store location
- Integration with the iPhone’s one click to bring up a Google map feature for the user’s current/closest store location
- Direct support by the underlying ShopLocal provided data backbone (eg SDAPI) to provide look up capabilities on both radians and decimal lat/long (geocode) values. So no more in-between step of hitting the Google maps API to convert lat/long pairs to ZIP codes
- Offline in-store shopping list where the user’s list of items of interest is accessible regardless the presence of an Internet connection. This only works via using some new functionality that is included within the latest web browsers as it evokes the data URI scheme (e.g., data:text/html;charset=utf-8;base64). Click this link to actually check out for yourselves how this type of offline web page works. This is a powerful new feature that will allow an entire web page essentially to be stored offline
- Support for some of the more traditional ways of navigating ShopLocal weekly ad content which include browse by categories, brands and keyword search
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