Trunk Media

Remember what Trade Me used to look like?

26 July 2007

I’ve been saving this for long enough so that you’ve forgotten what Trade Me used to look like. One of the tenets of usability is learnability. How long does it take someone to learn how to use your program? How long will a change take to effectively “re-learn”? All changes affect familiarity so you must be careful but I think this change has proven itself to be not only effective in terms of making the site more visually appealing, more usable but also making the site more profitable because it has exposed a much greater advertising area. Bring down the two screen captures and compare them by quickly flicking back and forward between them a few times.

I remember when the change occured there was a fair amount of negative feedback but I don’t hear anyone complaining any more or did they just give up?

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Yahoo! NZ sponsored search

12 July 2007

Further to my post about SmartAds, next week Yahoo! is launching a sponsored search program that specifically targets New Zealand users by region. Previously Yahoo! sponsored search was displayed trans-Tasman.

New Zealand will be divided into 16 geographic locations, a users location will be determined by a combination of their search phrase, Yahoo! account settings (if logged in) and their IP address. Advertisers will then be able to target users in specific regions. This is much more useful for advertisers than the current trans-Tasman model.

Other changes are the time taken to post ads – this will decrease as there will no longer be a manual review process. Additionally, the ranking of ads will take into account the click-through rate rather than just the bid amount of the advertiser.

It will be interesting to see the up-take and whether Yahoo! can steal some of the Google AdWords market share.

Related article in NZ Herald

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Yahoo! unveils SmartAds

10 July 2007

Yahoo! recently unveiled plans for SmartAds – online advertising customised by behavioural, demographic and geographic targeting.

The example cited by Yahoo!:

If a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo! Autos and has selected San Francisco as their default location in Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo!’s SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time that showcases a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer information and current lease rates.

Behavioural targeting tracks the sites a user visits online and suggests products accordingly. Geographic targeting isn’t exactly revolutionary but when combined with behavioural and demographic targeting SmartAds could be a powerful direct marketing tool.

The technological benefit of the SmartAds platform is that it allows advertisers to design individual advertisements and then provide a feed to their database of offers, products, locale etc. SmartAds then automatically generates the unique ad combinations from the database.

With eMarketer predicting a spend of $1 bn (US) on targeted advertising in 2008 you have to ask how long before Google responds…

Read the Yahoo! press release

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