Former Knight Ridder Digital leader heads to Yahoo! Marketplaces Unit

September 17, 2006 | 2 Comments

Short on time? Here's the bottom line. Short on time? Here’s the Bottom Line!

Please note that this article was written prior to Local Na8ion’s re-launch and as such the content may not be relevant for today’s audience of local marketers.

It seems like Yahoo! has a thing for hiring my former bosses and Knight Ridder leaders. At first, I thought they were just trying to get away from me, but I left Knight Ridder before Hilary so I’m not so sure any longer. First, it was Dan Finnigan, who left Knight Ridder Digital to to run Yahoo!Hilary Schneider, former Knight Ridder Exec and new Yahoo! Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Marketplaces Hotjobs. Then my boss Tim Lambert followed Dan to HotJobs, later to run their local search sales effort.

Hilary Schneider, former Knight Ridder Exec and new Yahoo! Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Marketplaces

Now, Hilary Schneider, the rising star of Knight Ridder Digital, and then Knight Ridder, who many thought would succeed Tony Ridder as CEO, is off to run Yahoo! Marketplaces. I don’t know if there is one person who got more screwed, or was made more fortunate than Hilary, by the recent McClatchy purchase of Knight Ridder. I honestly think she would have taken over Knight Ridder (the screwed part) but I don’t think print, or the legacy burdened Knight Ridder was ever the best place for her (the more fortunate part).

Although Hilary has deep roots in the newspaper space, having worked at Tribune before Knight Ridder, she was always a progressive Internet expert and leader. At Yahoo!, especially working for a grounded and intelligent manager like Susan Decker, Yahoo! is a lot more likely to let her expertise and intuition run unbridled in a place where legacy is something no more than a decade old - not 100. Watch out Google.

Congratulations Hilary - we wish you all the best.

Update September 14, 2006

I hasten to add that I am wondering what all this news about Hilary means to Dan Finnigan - Executive VP and General Manager of HotJobs? The information I’ve read so far indicates that Hilary has overall responsibility for all classifieds products, including HotJobs. I have not been able to verify this yet with Yahoo!. Is Dan still going to run HotJobs but report to Hilary? What does Dan’s recent move from NYC based HotJobs headquarters, back to Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale mean - if anything? It was Hilary who took over at Knight Ridder Digital after Dan left for HotJobs, and prior to these moves they worked together closely to put the whole CareerBuilder acquisition together when they represented Tribune and Knight Ridder at the time. As former peers, I would suspect things would get a little uncomfortable if Dan was reporting to Hilary now. But, that’s nothing more than speculation - I’m just intrigued by the moves and what hasn’t been said yet at Yahoo! and what this will mean to us who follow the online recruitment and local space.

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Posted by Julian | Filed Under Blog, Connect, News, Reviews & Rants 

Are Realtors the next casulty of the Internet, like Travel Agents before them?

September 6, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Short on time? Here's the bottom line. Short on time? Here’s the Bottom Line!

Please note that this article was written prior to Local Na8ion’s re-launch and as such the content may not be relevant for today’s audience of local marketers.

Most people know what the Internet did to local mom and pop Travel Agents. Most are out of business now or they’ve radically reshaped their service or value proposition. Why did this happen? Because there was a much better way to research and book travel online. No only that - consumers could save a lot of money.

Will Realtors end up holding an empty bag? Photo credit: Fishlamp
Will Realtors end up holding an empty bag? Photo credit: Fishlamp

The formula for the web disrupting an existing business model is well known.

  1. lower cost
  2. more control in the consumers hand
  3. better value proposition

When you combine all three, you have a category killer like we saw with local travel agents.

There’s an interesting related story here from the local advertising space where the advertising vehicles of old, like print newspapers, are on a parallel path to that of the local travel agent. More and more, realtors, builders, and rental properties are advertising online. Why? Because they know their customer base is steadily moving there - and it’s not a subtle pattern. The customers and advertisers are showing up online in places like Craigslist.org and Googlebase.com and the online versions of their local newspaper.

Here’s how the numbers look as of June 2006 when Borrell Assoicates, a leading consultant in the local advertising space, released some new figures.

Borrell Associates - June 2006 - graphic by eMarketer
Five years ago, online Real Estate ad spending was 3.5% of the total - by 2010 it will be 32.1%

According to an article titled Real Estate Classifieds Moving Online on eMarketer today, which reported on findings published on Classified Intelligence:

“Additional findings from Classified Intelligence also confirm the changing dynamics of the real estate advertising sector. In a survey of more than 100 real estate agents conducted with RealtyTimes.com, 58% of respondents indicated they are raising their advertising budgets this year, but the majority said they would be spending the bulk of their money online on their own Web sites. Free Web sites such as Craigslist and Googlebase are also attracting an increasing proportion of real estate agents over traditional mediums such as local print.”

The web has been eating away at all areas of print classifieds for quite some time now, but the real estate industry, and local realtors in particular, have been able to stay ahead of the game by continuing to monopolize the MLS listings. But that’s starting to change. Today, as tools like Craigslist and Googlebase become more popular, the MLS becomes less and less relevant. That’s key. The MLS boards and their member Realtors can continue to keep a stranglehold on their last vestiges of ‘control’ but not for much longer. The old guard that fails to adopt new practices will be left holding an empty bag, wondering where all their clients went.

Maybe it’s time to get another kind of license soon?

What do you think?

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Posted by Julian | Filed Under Blog, News, Reviews & Rants 

Selling online video ads to car dealers

September 2, 2006 | 3 Comments

Short on time? Here's the bottom line. Short on time? Here’s the Bottom Line!

Please note that this article was written prior to Local Na8ion’s re-launch and as such the content may not be relevant for today’s audience of local marketers.

This post was written for my friend, D.C.

D.C., I’m sure you’ll come up with 20 better ways to tell car dealers about how rich media advertising, and specifically online video, is the single most effective vehicle to reach their online prospects. I’ll try to answer your questions here about good ways to relate online video to a car dealer’s world, while also giving you the high level advice on pricing you asked for.

Targeting and creative Car dealers love TV ads - more importantly, they’re effective at reaching their customers. This is a great segue into online video ads. If you’ve got nothing else to work with then grab the dealer’s 15 second TV spots and use ‘em (don’t use 30’s - they’re too long for a medium where people can just click a ‘close’ button). Ideally, it’s better to craft something specifically for an online audience and content area, but that can be hard at the get go. Keep your advertiser’s campaign goals firmly in mind when choosing which of their TV spots to use, or when figuring out what to create if you’re starting from scratch. Does the auto dealer’s TV creative have a direct response message; or, are they branding vehicles? Probably direct response. This is where targeting comes in. Put the right message in front of the right audience. I’d go with a direct response creative on highly relevant car shopping content pages and more branding focused ads in general, or non-targeted placements. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, use your judgment.

Sales Tips - which ‘up’ is easier to close

Video is about engaging all of a person’s senses - just like good car sales.

Ask the dealer:

‘if you want your sales person to close a sale today, would you rather have a web based lead, a phone up, or a showroom up?’

The Dealer will acknowledge the obvious superiority of the showroom up. Why? For starters, only one of these ‘ups’ gives their sales staff an actual chance to get their client on a test drive, where the odds of them buying the vehicle go up exponentially. Only one of these ‘ups’ can put the keys in a buyer’s hand as the auto dealer waves goodbye to them as they drive off the lot.

Why is that?

During an in-person sales call you’re engaging all of the customers senses as you interact with them. The more the auto sales person can appeal to the buyer’s emotions, the better the chance for a sale. As you well know, this is universal to all sales, or anytime you want someone to accept your ideas or viewpoint. In person, you can listen to a client, react, answer questions, gesture or show them the car, have them touch and smell the leather, and hear the thunk of the doors. Their prospect is immersed in a rich experience. Good online video advertising leverages many of these same modalities . Video is capable of creating a highly emotional response to your message, unlike one or two dimensional ads like radio spots, newspaper ads, or traditional online banner ads. Online video, like TV, has the ability to use sight, sound, color, and imagery to engage and connect people with your advertiser’s message.

Those are the differentiators for video and rich media advertising. Here are some of the keywords to use when relating these points :

  • Immersion / immersive
  • Interaction
  • Engagement
  • Emotion / emotive
  • Exciting
  • High Impact
  • Clutter-busting
  • Connection

How’s it sound? Maybe something like these sound bites.

“what test drives are to closing sales, video ads are to getting foot traffic in the showroom”

or

“the difference between a regular online ad and a online video ad - is like the difference between a showroom up and a telephone up - they’re both good, but only the video ad gives you the chance to take your clients on a virtual test drive.”

or

“regular online ads can get as lost on a web site as a white Chevy Impala in a rental car lot. Online video ads are like the rental car bus that drops you off at the door of your rental car - there’s no way you’ll get lost.” (D.C., obviously you won’t want to use the Chevy example in a GM dealership! Have a generic, low-end model in mind from a competitor before you walk in the door).

or

“what communicates the value of your dealership and model line up more - a two inch ad headline screaming your sale price of the week or a video ad showing a smiling driver passing someone with a gas guzzler filling up at the gas station as they whiz by in the full knowledge that they’ve saved time, money, and are smarter for it?”

or

“online video ads are to your marketing results, what showroom ups are to your sales force - interactive, compelling and highly effective”

or

“online video ads are priced higher because they’re the top seller, the standout in your lineup, and like your dealer allotment, there’s only so many to go around.”

Hard Facts to back up your sales approach
In numerous independent tests, online rich media ads have been shown to perform far more effectively than their traditional online counterparts - aka, the banner (in all their shapes and incarnations). This is true for both direct response metrics, like click-thrus, purchases, and sign-ups, as well as major branding metrics like view-thrus (see my training materials) and things like message association, (Nike is associated in consumer minds with “Just do it”). See my rich media sales collateral I sent you for specific numbers.

Pricing
I can’t tell you what specific rate to charge, since that’s a function of your publisher’s reach, audience, targeting, and other products. I can tell you that rich media ads are top shelf and online video is the very top most shelf. It’s priced higher because it works better and there’s always a limited inventory (scarcity - only so much to go around).

Does this help?
What are your thoughts or questions?

This this whole piece has been 2-D, I thought I’d close by letting some video do the engaging.

tags: “rich media”, “rich media advertising”, “online video ads”, “video ads”, “selling online ads to auto dealers”, “auto marketing”, “local online advertising”, “local advertising”, “local online advertising”

Posted by Julian | Filed Under Blog, Connect