3rd
Ads as Site Features (when they work...)
One of the most promising trends I’m seeing in web advertising today is the integration of ads that become site features. I’m talking about the widgets, forms, and other built-in site features sponsored by advertisers that allow the user to interact with the ad without having to click through blindly.
For example, The New York Times and an integrated Expedia widget:
Enter your trip in the widget, get a ticket. Easy enough. But Expedia is even smarter than this: they’ve integrated with the search/drop down, bringing you a customized hotel suggestion based on the destination you choose (in this case, you’re reading an article about Kyrgyzstan as a destination):
There are also a multitude of examples of this model working in the consumer electronics market — entire sites (e.g. www.dpreview.com) set up to review products with the sole purpose of becoming a channel to give you a chance to buy the very product you’re reading about. This isn’t keyword stuff; it isn’t guesswork; it’s letting the consumer tell the advertiser what he wants and the advertiser listening.
With commercials and ads becoming more and more a consumer choice rather than a force pushed upon them in linear media (think old school television; people used to have to watch *commercials* before they got TiVo! The HORROR…), it makes sense that advertisers put some of the control of the ad in the consumer’s hands. When I’m searching for hotels, this doesn’t feel like an ad to me…and I see it as far more successful for Expedia than a generic “Thousands of Travel Destinations on Expedia Today!” type brand ad that I’d surely ignore.
I suppose the only shortcoming of this model is its complexity. This works great for large advertisers and large publishers like the NYT — but the rest of the web isn’t this deeply wired yet. It takes a lot of negotiation, a lot of integration, and the fact of the matter is we’re still seeing dumb banners or keyword matching search-type marketing most of the time.
But when it works, it’s pretty sweet.
UPDATE: Anybody notice that that Kyrgyzstan’s hotel listings are…not in Kyrgyzstan? Similarly, choosing “Britain” as a destination produced an article about Cornwall, and no hotels in that area showed up. Also, clicking through doesn’t bring me anywhere…