So here is a very interesting data point, from one recent Pointroll campaign that had part of the ad impressions benefiting from Yahoo! BT data and the other part of the impressions did not include any BT data.
BT enabled Pointroll ads had a 41% overall higher interaction rate than non-BT enabled Pointroll ads.
Same creative. Same publisher. Same timeframe. Basically as many other variables were held constant between the two groups except the inclusion of BT data within the test group. Sure, its not airtight statistically sound case due to the single campaign data point, but its very indicative of other similar campaign results the team has seen when comparing BT enabled ad results with those that did not receive any additional insights from BT data.
The important point to take away is BT works. By using user level “hints” to better select what creative, copy and content elements should be inserted into the ad units, BT enabled ads are just more relevant and personalized to the user. Therefore its no surprise that these more personalized ads receive more interest as expressed in either interactions or clicks.
If we look at click-thru rates as another meaningful measure, BT enabled Pointroll ads had a 73.5% overall higher click-thru rate than non-BT enabled Pointroll ads.
You have to love free promotion, especially when it involves the #1 most visited web page on the planet. Yahoo! recently hand selected the Target Weekly Ad MyYahoo! homepage application to be featured as one of the apps available on user’s Yahoo! homepages. This placement can’t be purchased by an advertiser as an app must be chosen by the Yahoo! Homepage team to be featured within the Yahoo! homepage, and Target won the lottery on this one. It’s great to see this app up there with the likes of the Wall Street Journal, BBC, Mint.com, eBay, Wired.com and WebMD whom all also have Homepage enabled apps.
From the Yahoo.com homepage, if a user clicks on the "+ADD" within the left hand navigation area called "My Favorites", a user is presented a pre-screened list of allowable apps that can be added to one's Yahoo! homepage.
If a user chooses to add the Target Weekly Ad App, it will then appear within the "My Favorites" left hand nav section in an unexpanded state.
If a user chooses to interact with the Target Weekly Ad App, the entire app expands over the main body of content and the user can browse all of the weekly ad steals and deals right there within their personalized Yahoo! homepage.
Target is also helping to promote both the MyYahoo! (and now Yahoo! Homepage) and iGoogle widgets by including them within the header area of their dedicated Weekly Ad email alert. It's a nice integrated tie-in to cross-promote the various ways the Target Weekly Ad is available for viewing online.
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.
Rack up another SmartSearch client. The Home Depot launched today, both within Google and Yahoo!, a very store focused and localized SEM campaign. Here is a live search results page that currently features a Home Depot SmartSearch ad and here is the unique dynamic landing page that the user is directed to upon click.
Many thanks to Reprise Media in NYC (The Home Depot’s search agency) for deeply working with the ShopLocal to make this possible. By working as partners serving the same client/advertiser (e.g., The Home Depot), we were collectively able to bring all of the following behind-the-scenes integrations live:
- Reprise Media’s search engine tracking / bidding optimization via Omniture
- Home Depot’s web analytic tracking via Coremetrics
- ShopLocal’s web analytic tracking via WebTrends
Below are a few visuals that show this new localized search program in action.
Here is a screen shot of The Home Depot Google ad for "Garden Supplies" within the Norfolk, VA market.
The SEM ad title is dynamically generated, as well as numerous ad copy points (4 in this case) and the landing page URL
Finally, if a user did in fact click on the Google text ad, they would be taken to this circular page view which features the highest density of "Garden Supplies" items
The Yahoo! homepage. One of the very most visited web pages in the world. This last Sunday and for many to come, Target will be one of the predominant advertisers that will be featured on the Yahoo! homepage and make use of the powerful Smart Ad platform that ShopLocal has been a part of since the very beginning. These Target Y! Homepage ads are 100% powered by ShopLocal weekly ad content which is a big milestone around ShopLocal, as this has been in the works for over 9 months.
Here is a screen shot of the Yahoo! Homepage on Sunday July, 26 2009 that featured a Target Smart Ad that pulled in ShopLocal weekly ad content.
Getting this whole setup to work has had its own challenges since no 3rd party rich media ads are allowed on the Yahoo! homepage (unlike the other major portals of MSN and AOL) due to Yahoo!’s own internal concerns around security, speed, performance and ability to support the huge traffic volumes. So to meet this core “Yahoo! must serve the ads” requirement, the ad was constructed by an internal team at Yahoo! and utilizes an innovative integration into the Teracent near-real time optimization and learning engine that picks the best ShopLocal weekly ad content for each individual ad impression served. This really is the holy grail of one:one marketing at some serious scale.
The ShopLocal team also had to work through some content publishing timing issues and creating some custom product selection logic to deal with the fact that the Yahoo! homepage can not support geographical versioned content / ads currently with wisdom of the crowds popularity ranking data layered in as well. In the end however, a very solid solution was found to every challenge and this monster campaign launched exactly on time. It really is fun to know that what you work is on is seen by billions of people. Not many folks can say that about their products.
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