Posted on 2 July 2009 by pflanagan
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This is a really big deal. To fully onboard and integrate around the (below) top portal publishers and ad networks that have demographic AND behavioral (collectively referred to as “BT data herein) data on their users in a way so that Pointroll PaperBoy ads can use these user-level BT insights to actually change WHAT content is actually shown within the ad units. This is cutting edge, one-to-one data driven marketing. Every single ad that gets served has the potential to be different and uniquely tailored (from a content perspective) for every unique user.
- Platform-a: There are two (2) parts that make collectively makeup Platform-a which are…
- Advertising.com (the 3rd party ad network)
- AOL (owned and operated sites that are BT powered by Tacoda)
- quadrantONE
- CollectiveMedia
- Yahoo!
These are the current publisher / ad network partners that ShopLocal and Pointroll have integrated the publisher provided BT data into the PaperBoy product. More publishers are in the works that will be launching soon.
At an unique user level (so for any given ad impression), these premier publishers and ad networks typically can provide the below insights:
- ZIP Code (and sometimes other higher level GeoLocation data is available)
- Gender
- Race
- Age / Year Of Birth (sometimes age ranges and sometimes exact birth year)
- Categor(ies) Of Interest (that the user has shown a past interest in - can be multiple)
- Publisher Property Type (helps determine the context of publisher page were the ad will be inserted - ex. finance.yahoo.com
- Publisher Page Position (helps determine the actual placement of the ad - ex. MPU above the fold)
- Publisher Page Context Keyword(s)
A couple of important notes however around these publishers provided BT targeting data:
- The amount (eg depth) of BT insights for any given ad impressions varies per publisher from some impressions having:
- No BT data available
- Only some BT data available
- Very complete sets of BT data available
- Which BT data points are collected and maintained varies from publisher to publisher. Not everyone for example has age data on it’s users
- The BT data collection methodology greatly varies from publisher to publisher. How extensive and wide any given publishers reaches into web logs, search histories, registration data, etc is all part of the secret special sauce that each publisher maintains
- The frequency of how often the BT data is updated is also a variable across publishers
- Storage, re-use and re-distribution of this publisher owned and controlled BT data is clearly prohibited and ShopLocal and Pointroll tightly adhere to this policy as it helps protects our publisher partner’s interests
- Privacy is one of the biggest concerns throughout the entire process. With all the recent self-imposed industry regulations around BT targeted online advertising, all parties have been very careful to be very respectful of the end users’ privacy throughout all of the design and integrations steps. Our goal is to actual try to offer user a more personalized, more relevant overall site experience which includes the content within the display ads
- From a publisher perspective: All information about any given user is 100% anonymous with no personally identifiable information (PII) being passed over to ShopLocal or Pointroll
- From an ad server (Pointroll) perspective: All ads do not directly capture any PII which includes, but isn’t limited to, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and credit card numbers. No sensitive information is collected via the the ads. We even extend this by not allowing the cookies dropped to users machines to associate with any personally-identifiable information. (For purposes of this post, personally-identifiable information doesn’t include IP addresses or ZIP code)
- From a localized content provider (ShopLocal) perspective: No PII is collected or stored or the user
Some of the next steps that the ShopLocal and Pointroll teams are gearing up to undertake:
Posted on 1 July 2009 by pflanagan
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Called “The Survival Of The Smartest“, this new Office Depot interactive microsite is being funded from traditional print advertising dollars all in an effort to further highlight the great in-store deals. It’s a fun campaign that is being supported via Hulu videos and email that is aimed at driving awareness and traffic to the self-proclaimed “Small Business Self-Bailout” website that has some clever video content. There is not a whole lot of calls to action and the site is somewhat lacking in real promotional content (deals, sales, coupons, etc). Maybe if this initial effort proves successful at moving the needle of instore sales, more actionable promotional content will make its way onto the site.
Here are the "Smart Specials" which are a small subset of the overall Office Depot weekly ad that are pulled out and featured under the "Survival Of The Smartest" section.
Here is the official blurb from Brandweek
Young & Rubicam, New York, has created an online show for Office Depot to spotlight its weekly deals. “Smart Specials with Matt and Matt,” which is a supplement to the company’s Sunday print circulars, is running on TheSurvivaloftheSmartest.com and Hulu.
Posted on 26 June 2009 by pflanagan
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The possibilities of distribution points for weekly ad content continues to increase. Today two versions of the same core weekly ad application went live for Target. These apps were built to live on user’s start / homepages that iGoogle and My Yahoo! pretty much have a monopoly on. Specifically the two apps that went live were for:
Here is what the two apps look like in their native state once they have been “installed” within a user’s personalized homepage (Note that all throughout this post I use the word ‘install’ very loosely. What I am trying to refer to is the process of allowing and adding these apps/gadgets to a user’s homepage. No real code is actually being installed on a user’s local machine):
This is how the My Yahoo! open app appears on a user's homepage in its native 'small' state
The iGoogle gadget and how is appears on a user's homepage in it's native 'un-expanded' state
Here is what each app looks like once a user chooses to expand them to the ‘large’ view:
This is how the My Yahoo! open app appears in its "expanded" state
This is how the iGoogle gadget appears in its "expanded" state
So now for a quick comparison of these two competing platforms:
- My Yahoo!
- A much more complicated ‘install’ process that involves up to three different clicks, compared to the one (1) click ‘install’ on iGoogle. Yes, Yahoo! Open Apps allow for more user driven privacy controls and a great degree of social features, so these come at a cost of a more involved ‘installation’ process
- The “full” or “expanded” view of the app can be built in Adobe Flash / Flex, which in this case the Target app is. This just opens up the door to a richer, more engaging user experience
- The “full” or “expanded” view has some graphical display ads wrapped around the content. I happened to catch one ad with some layering / shine-through issues going on that was interfering with the right hand part of the app
- By default, it appears that the Target Open app within My Yahoo! is setup to auto opt-in all users into the below two (2) types of communications. Great for the marketer, but maybe not so great for the unknowing consumer:
- iGoogle
- Within the native, non-expanded view, the gadget gets cut-off. This looks sort of odd and is a bummer since this is the view state that most users will see the vast majority of the time
- Built using light, fast and universal coding languages such as HTML, Javascript and DHTML
- Since it is not built in flash, in this case a much deeper integration is exposed at the item detail page that pulls in an Amazon.com hosted layer that brings in all sorts of rich functionality like local inventory look up, one-click add to cart, add to lists, ratings and reviews
- If a user decides to ’share’ the app with friends, within iGoogle the app makes some useful suggestions as to which friends of yours you might consider based upon your emailing habits within Gmail. With Yahoo!, this is just one big blank box that is nowhere as user friendly
Here is a complete set of production screen grabs of the widgets from both iGoogle and My Yahoo! posted up on Flickr just in case. Finally, a bit of well deserved recognition to the Target and AKQA teams that did all of the heavy lifting to get these fairly complex apps launched.
Posted on 25 June 2009 by pflanagan
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It’s fun to grow. So yesterday another instance of CircularCentral went live which brings the total number of live sites up to 106 with the addition of our latest partner Boston.com. To learn more about the other sites that makeup this network, read more here.
- Boston.com (online side of The Boston Globe)
The latest and greatest addition to the CircularCentral network of sites - Boston.com
Posted on 24 June 2009 by pflanagan
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The team actually did it. After months of internal R&D, the first SmartSearch campaign is finally live on Google for JCPenney (only for the Kansas City DMA currently) and on Yahoo!. This marks a historic day here at ShopLocal as the SmartSearch product allows for fully automated, localized search engine marketing (SEM) on both Google & Yahoo!. Below is an actual screen shot from a Google search result page for the keyword “womens apparel” that comes back with a SmartSearch paid in the top paid position:
The SmartSearch ad on this LIVE Google search result page is the very first paid ad in the top ranked spot. Note that within this particular screenshot the organic search results are from Chicago, but all of the paid ads are from the Kansas City DMA area due to fact that ShopLocal is located in Chicago
And here is what a user would see if they actual clicked on the Google ad:
Notice how the SmartCircular landing page is loaded with localized, relevant content to the search term "womens apparel".
And just to be fair to our good friends over at Y!, here is how the same live SmartSearch campaign shows up within a Yahoo! search results page (SRP) for the keyword “bedding” within the Kansas City geo-location:
The SmartSearch ad for JCP is showing up in the fourth (4th) position in the paid search portion within Yahoo! currently
A few of the most notable differences between this specific search effort and all the rest of the pack of typical paid search campaigns is:
- Hyper-Local Focus so that a retailer’s store foot print drives where the ads will be shown and what content will be within any given ad. So if there are no “shoes” on sale within some store locations, then those underlying geographies of the country would not get targeted with a search keyword of “shoes”
- In-Store Focused Conversion instead of the typical online or eCommerce sale based conversion. This type of paid search campaign is not intended to drive online orders, but rather shoppers into local stores that make purchases offline
- In-Store Sale Based Content as the circular or weekly ad is the underlying source of this promotional store focused set of keyword ads. This helps leverage this core existing offline assets
- Full Automation of the creation of all the localized keywords, ad copy and landing page URLs. Once a set of ad copy templates are setup and agreed to by the client and/or agency, this entire process of determining what keywords should be active for what markets and what the associated ad copy and landing page URLs should be is all system driven. The sheer volume of keywords and associated ad copy and landing page URLs would never be possible to be done by humans on a week in and week out basis
Some of the key features that SmartSearch has built in version 1.0 are:
- Fully dynamic and localized search ad copy that can pull in the correct, localized information in regards to:
- # of Items On Sale within the relevant content slice that the keyword pertains to
- Example: 35 Deals (on womens apparel items on sale)
- Relevant & Exact Keyword
- Price Range, from lowest priced item and/or to highest price item of the all the items within the relevant content slice that the keyword pertains to
- Retailer Location, as expressed via a mixture of City Name, State Abbreviation, or ZIP Code
- Example: Shop Your Local K. C. (Kansas City, MO)
- Retailer Name
- Sale End Date of the in-store promotion that this content is being drawn from
- Example: Sale Ends Jun 30
- Auto ad copy template selection so that when some of the above dynamic ad copy variables get too long (total # of characters), the systems gracefully falls back through a series of alternate ad copy templates selecting the one that best fits the dynamic data being thrown at it and at the same time attempting to maximize all available allowable characters within both the headline/title and the description line(s)
- Client specific business rules can be created and applied so that each unique advertiser can tune the ad copy templates and associated landing pages (very powerful)
- Fully dynamic and localized landing page (via a precisely relevant click thru URL) that takes the user deep within the ShopLocal hosted SmartCircular site
- Support for third party bidding and management tools so that search agencies can still use their same tool sets to manage these localized paid search campaigns in a native manner
- Support for both Google and Yahoo! paid search campaigns. The other search engines are not supported currently, but that doesn’t mean too much as they all collectively only represent less than 15% of the overall US search volume as of May 2009 (comScore data)
Here is a practical break down of how the two JSP example (live) ads from both Google and Yahoo! actually breakdown according to the ad copy specifications imposed by each search engine:
- Google AdWords
- Keyword: Womens Apparel
- Headline (25 characters max): Apparel At JCPenney
- Line 1 (35 characters max): 35 Deals Starting At $4 Visit
- Line 2 (35 characters max): Your Local JCPenney By Jun 30
- Yahoo! Search Marketing
- Keyword: Bedding
- Title (40 characters max): Bedding From $5
- Description (70 characters max): Shop Your Local K.C. JCPenney Store. Sale Ends Jun 30.
For another look at what the SmartSearch product looks like in action, you can personally check it out by using the Google Preview Ad Tool. Just click the image above and make sure to enter a keyword of "womens apparel" and select a State location of "Missouri ---Kansas City MO" and you'll get to see localized search in action.
Finally, a special thanks to the JCP and 360i (JCP’s search agency) teams for all working really hard on this launch and making hyper-local paid search a reality.
Posted on 18 June 2009 by pflanagan
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SMS (Short Message Service or otherwise known more commonly as ‘Text’ or ‘Texting’) is the most pervasive digital data application in the world with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers sending and receiving text messages on their phones. In the US alone, in 2008 there was about 75 billion message sent per month. These sort of numbers should make any marketer pay attention.
Here at ShopLocal we have been live for about year with SMS messaging in a variety of applications. One of the unique aspects of how ShopLocal has applied texting technology is for on-demand, ad-hoc alerting and messaging. Instead of trying to “subscribe” a user to a series of ongoing message, ShopLocal uses text message as a way of moving content from a user’s computer to their more portable mobile device. So users that choose to engage this SMS feature on any ShopLocal site are NOT signing up for a never-ending stream of messages, but rather just one (1) single message to help the user take some information they have identified as useful with them.
The core value proposition is simple then. If a user knows where your store is and/or knows an item they want to purchase, the more sticky and portable this information can be the better. Since the goal of the SmartCircular sites is to drive shoppers that are researching online into a physical store location to make a purchase, this type of shopper tool should increase the ‘conversion’ rate of these type of consumers.
By using text or SMS messages, there are loads of benefits not available to any other medium such as:
- Ubiquitous format across carriers and mobile devices
- Highest deliverability rate of any pushed based medium
- Messages are sent as the action happens which creates instant user gratification
- 95%+ of all US mobile subscribers are supported which includes all the major carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular, AMP’d, Alltel, etc, etc, etc (all due to picking the right underlying mobile platform partner - 4INFO)
With text or SMS messages, there are a few constraints to be aware of (so as to tell a balanced story):
- Only 160 total characters can be inserted into any one (1) outbound SMS message. This is an inherent limitation of this type of media
- Can’t track opens like you can with email. You can track sent and click thrus but open rates are not available
- Privacy and permission are managed at the highest tolerances. The mobile carriers often remind anyone that is sending message across their walled networks that unlike email where
- To prevent SPAM, no more than 5 unique messages can be sent to any given user within a 24 hour period
- This service is only available in the US. Sorry Canada…
The two main use cases that ShopLocal currently supports with mobile text (SMS) messaging are:
1. Send A Store Location Of Interest To Your Mobile Phone (just one)
2. Send A Specific Item Of Interest To Your Mobile Phone (just one)
Here is an example of what a typical screen flow would look like for the 'Send A Store' to a mobile phone or device. The user is prompted to enter their 10-digit mobile phone number, agree to a terms and conditions (mandated by the mobile carriers) and then hits a "SEND" button to fire off the SMS text message. Note the red arrow. This is the link on the page that triggers this mobile messaging feature.
Once a user hits the "SEND" button, the SmartCiruclar site displays this confirmation message on screen assuming all the error checking conditions are meet.
Finally, here is an example of what type of SMS text message would actually be sent to a user's mobile phone or device. In this case, the store address, phone number and hours of operation would be included.
Here is a partial list of some of the retailer that have chosen to deploy this type of mobile messaging - just click to see and use live examples of this mobile feature:
Posted on 16 June 2009 by pflanagan
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The built out and launching of the SmartSearch product line has produced some great by-product capabilities. One of which is the on-the-fly, real time creation of dynamic landing page within the SmartCircular sites for paid search visitors. This means that for any given keyword ad (AdWord) within Google for example, a custom assortment or collection of weekly ad items could be assembled within the destination landing page to best fit the keyword(s). Furthermore, SmartSearch clients will be able to choose one of two types of landing pages.
- Result Set Based - This type mimics a typical gridded result set of items that nearly all eCommerce sites on the planet us to display search or browse results. The content shown in this ‘Hollywood Squares’ type of 3 X 3 grid is either category based, brand based or a mix of both category and brand together
- Circular Page Based - This type plays to the traditional printed weekly ad metaphor and drops the inbound visitor within the the circular page that is the best match for the paid keyword search ad that they are coming from
Custom dynamic landing pages allow for on an individual keyword basis, the ability to create an unique assortment of items that span across potentially multiple categories and/or brands so as to maximize the potential of a positive click-thru experience of the visitor that comes to the SmartCircular site via a paid search ad
Specifically, this new dynamic landing page (or one could call it a form of deep linking) capability now allows ShopLocal created SmartSearch ads for Google & Yahoo! to drive any click-thru traffic to the following areas within a SmartCircular site:
- Category Browse Pages which takes the user to the gridded results set page for the requested category(ies) of item(s)
- Brand Browse Pages which takes the user to the gridded results set page for the requested brand(s) of item(s)
- Category + Brand Browse Pages which takes the user to the gridded results set page for the requested category(ies) AND brand(s) subset (or union of all the different content segments) of item(s)
- Circular Page Based Upon A Category which takes the user to the highest density circular page that contains the requested category(ies) of item(s)
- Circular Page Based Upon A Brand which takes the user to the highest density circular page that contains the requested brand(s) of item(s)
- Circular Page Based Upon A Category + Brand which takes the user to the highest density circular page that contains the requested categor(ies) AND brand(s) subset (or union of all the different content segments) of item(s)
There are a few important notes to understand about this new capability:
- Only ShopLocal can setup and use this SmartSearch exclusive feature at this point. This means clients that are not SmartSearch customers will not be able to benefit currently
- Even hidden categories and/or brands can be accessed and made visible via this powerful new method of assembling the right content for the right keyword
- The more unions that are requested, the greater the chance of less or no content. So by trying to find the union (or the overlapping portion) of where Electronic category items AND Homewares category items AND Nike brand items, you will probably only end up with a few items at best.
- Since these custom & dynamic landing pages are all triggered by a simple parameter (called an AdGroupID), the underlying URL does not have to change to change what content is displayed within the landing page. All of this assignment logic of keyword A - gets - content 1 + content 2 + content 3 has been abstracted to a back end ShopLocal system thus allowing near complete flexibility on where any given URL resolves. Making changes to where a link goes no longer requires changing the link itself, but rather just the back end system that manages this mapping and assignment process
Posted on 11 June 2009 by pflanagan
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If you check out Shaws.com homepage right now, you’ll see a great implementation of two variations of the same weekly ad widget that the ShopLocal team brought to life.
The first and more prominent version is the in line and embedded weekly ad widget that has an above the fold placement on the homepage of Shaws.com. This widget shows off some of the best promotions at the user’s closest local Shaw’s store. It really serves as great dynamic, localized teaser content to engage a user with the weekly ad very early on within a visit to the Shaws.com web site which will hopefully lead to a deeper, dedicated browsing of the entire Shaw’s online circular web site (this site JUST got upgraded to SmartCircular 4.1 ad supported BTW)
The large 180px X 400px Flash widget that sits on the left hand side (bright yellow) is highly visible and easily snaggable as it has been wrapped with WidgetBox's "Get Widget" feature.
The second version of this widget is a little more hidden. It is an Adobe AIR desktop version of the same “Best Of” the weekly ad widget. This version allows a user to actually download to their local machine and install the widget so that it can run outside of any browser. It even has limited off-line capabilities (local data cache within the desktop app itself) just in case the user doesn’t have access to an internet connection to refresh the circular content. To check it out for yourself first hand, just download and install this Shaw’s weekly ad desktop widget
Notice that this widget is living outside of the browser. It has it's own permanent desktop shortcut icon. This version of the widget is actual running on top of the Adobe AIR cross-OS run time environment.
Posted on 11 June 2009 by pflanagan
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WOW. We finally reached critical mass. As of yesterday, the CircularCentral team here at ShopLocal has official launched into production one-hundred and five (yes, 105!) co-branded instances of CircularCentral (mainly across the Gannett Digital Network of newspaper and broadcast sites). That’s a lot of web sites to produce, test and migrate in a very short span of about 2 months. But the team did it, on schedule every step of the way.
105 CircularCentral sites are now live and lots of future growth to go! The orders for new partner site instances for CircularCentral just keep rolling in.
The below directory of CircularCentral sites follows the following format:
- Publisher or Broadcast Station or Newspaper Partner Name
- Local Market(s) Served
- Web site address / URL of the corresponding co-branded instance of CircularCentral
Here is the complete current list of ALL of the CircularCentral network of sites:
- Yahoo!
- YourLI.com
- The Cincinnati Enquirer
- The Detroit Free Press - Custom Integrated eEdition Version
- The Detroit News - Custom Integrated eEdition Version
- The Indianapolis Star
- The Arizona Republic
- Asbury Park Press
- Florida Today
- The Des Moines Register
- The News-Press
- The Greenville News
- The Honolulu Advertiser
- The Courier-Journal
- The Tennessean
- Reno Gazette-Journal
- Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
- The Journal News
- The News Journal
- Asheville Citizen-Times
- WXIA-TV, Atlanta
- The Burlington Free Press
- Courier News
- Courier-Post
- KUSA-TV, Denver
- The Detroit Free Press
- The Detroit News
- Green Bay Press-Gazette
- The Clarion-Ledger
- KARE-TV, Minneapolis-St. Paul
- The Montgomery Advertiser
- Daily Record
- The Desert Sun
- Pensacola News Journal
- Poughkeepsie Journal
- Argus Leader
- Springfield News-Leader
- Tallahassee Democrat
- USA TODAY
- The Post-Crescent
- Press & Sun-Bulletin
- Star-Gazette
- The Reporter
- Iowa City Press-Citizen
- Journal and Courier
- Lansing State Journal
- Herald Times Reporter
- News Journal
- The Star Press
- Oshkosh Northwestern
- Statesman Journal
- The Sheboygan Press
- The Shreveport Times
- St. Cloud Times
- Stevens Point Journal
- WTSP-TV, St. Petersburg
- Tucson Citizen
- Wausau Daily Herald
- The Daily Tribune
- The Town Talk
- Battle Creek Enquirer
- Telegraph-Forum
- Newspaper Network of Central Ohio
- Chillicothe Gazette
- The Leaf-Chronicle
- Coshocton Tribune
- The News-Messenger
- Fort Collins Coloradoan
- Great Falls Tribune
- The Daily Advertiser
- Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
- The Marion Star
- Marshfield News Herald
- The News Star
- The Advocate
- Daily World
- News Herald
- Times Herald
- Times Recorder
- WLBZ-TV, Bangor
- WGRZ-TV, Buffalo
- WKYC-TV, Cleveland
- WLTX-TV, Columbia
- WZZM-TV, Grand Rapids
- WFMY-TV, Greensboro
- Hattiesburg American
- The Ithaca Journal
- The Jackson Sun
- WJXX-TV & WTL-TV
- WBIR-TV, Knoxville
- Daily Press & Argus, Livingston County
- KTHV-TV, Little Rock
- WMAZ-TV, Macon
- The Baxter Bulletin
- The Daily News Journal
- WCSH-TV, Portland
- Palladium-Item
- KXTV-TV, Sacramento
- The Californian
- The Daily Times
- The Spectrum
- KSDK-TV, St. Louis
- The Daily News Leader
- The Daily Journal
- Visalia Times-Delta
- WUSA-TV, Washington
Posted on 11 June 2009 by vsharma
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The ShopLocal Retail Index was up 36 percent for the month of May compared to the same period last year. The Index registered at 280, an all-time record for a non-holiday period (benchmarked at 100 for January 2006). Not surprisingly consumers are finding the Internet an increasingly valuable resource for planning their in-store shopping in this difficult retail environment.
This is also not likely to change in the near-term. According to an Association of National Advertisers survey last month, the marketing activity that is most likely to be increased in the current economic environment is pricing deals, with 47% of marketers planning to do so.
May 2009 ShopLocal Index highlights include:
- The ShopLocal Index is up 36 percent in May year-over-year, with 356 million page views (adjusted), versus 282 million last year.
- The Home & Garden led the way with 52 percent more page views than last year, followed closely by the Department Stores and Mass Merchant segment with 45 percent growth.
- The Other Retail (specialty) segment showed the weakest growth, but still up 15 percent from a year ago.
- Consumer page views per visit on a per retailer basis averaged 13.6 for the month of May, up a strong 10% from a year ago.
The ShopLocal Index is the advertising industry’s first market indicator designed to track the influence of the Internet on in-store shopping. Updated monthly, the Index is based on the online activity of more than 25 million monthly consumer visits to in-store local promotions that are presented on the sites of more than 50 major U.S. retailers, including JCPenney, Target, Best Buy, Walgreens and Home Depot. These retailers cover all major retail segments including computers, consumer electronics, office supplies, home improvement, department stores, mass merchants, grocery, drug and various specialty stores. The retailers’ online circular sites are powered by ShopLocal’s SmartCircular technology.
(1 out of 5)
(3 out of 5)
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