The right offer at the right time. The ninja sales guys around me would always insist that this was the key – know what your client wants, and fulfil their needs.
So using that criteria, it would seem that Yahoo! is doing a damn fine job. According to today’s WSJ, the new SmartAds appearing in Yahoo! Travel have been a wow with advertisers, and the company now plans to roll them out into other channels.
How does it work? You start digging around in Yahoo! Travel for a break in Toronto in October. Like all good researchers, you don’t buy the first deal on offer. So a few days later you go back – and hey presto, there are leverly placed ads that offer good deals on holidays in Toronto in October.
In theory, it’s a win for everyone – you get the right service at the right time, and the advertiser gets the right buyer at the right time. But, as the WSJ story points out:
There also is a danger consumer online-privacy concerns could derail them, since Yahoo makes heavy use of data about its visitors to target ads, including information users supply during registration, location data from their computers and insights into their interests gleaned from their online “behavior,” such as where they have gone within Yahoo and their keyword-search history.
Yahoo Banks on SmartAds To Lift Display Business – WSJ.com
Maybe I’m soft, but such ‘intrusions’ have never bothered me. I’m quite used to supplying information online that will enable people to cut their cloth they offer to my needs. Would I rather have a banner ad for a new car while I’m hunting for that well-earned holiday, or a list of flight and hotel prices to the place that are actually useful. No brainer.
