Yahoo introduces SmartAds, advertising becomes more targeted
Posted by Admin @ July 4th, 2007 in Search Engine Marketing
The personalization of advertising has begun. We at 77 ask the question: will it come to an abrupt end at this point? In other words, what looks like the beginning of something revolutionary, might well be the final station.
Yahoo introduced SmartAds yesterday, a marketing service aimed at personalization of advertising through the collection of behavioral data. An additional feature is the personalized ‘construction’ of the ads, based on viewer’s demographics, location, and search behavior. SmartAds is able to put an advertisement together from a set of separate parts. It will adapt the parts on, for example, where the viewer is from. This way an advertiser can create familiar background scenes – skylines of their hometowns, for example – for some of their viewers, by uploading dozens of different backgrounds and have SmartAds pick the right background for the location the viewer is from.
This personalized advertising has been getting a lot of buzz, but when you take a look at European law, it becomes clear that personalization cannot go much further than where it has gone now with SmartAds. For example, in most European countries a provider is not allowed to store single IP address browsing behavior. This excludes the possibility to target a single individual based on her Web behavior. That leaves general geographic information and stored search behavior – for which the user has given permission – to personalize advertising. And that is just what SmartAds is doing. Nonetheless, constructing an ad from different parts is a really smart thing to do. According to test results, click through rate is two to three times higher than on normal banner advertising. Promising results and we expect Yahoo’s competitors to follow soon with a service like this.
Last 5 posts in Search Engine Marketing
- Google rolls out the Search-based keyword tool - November 19th, 2008
- Google Site Search allows instant web indexing with On-Demand Indexing - November 17th, 2008
- YouTube Sponsored Videos open a new horizon for online marketing - November 13th, 2008
- Google Flu Trends is watching out for your well-being - November 12th, 2008
- Online Reputation Management, what to do about it? - November 6th, 2008
It worked for me in Swedish for a Swedish web site today so I think it already...