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September 1st, 2010 06:47 AM
Find Your Yahoo! App
Appolicious launches the YAP app finder
Appolicious is a website that lets users find and review apps. (Yeah, it’s one of those clever ideas you and I both wish we’d thought up first, but didn’t.) Well, the big brains over there recently added a new section to their site devoted entirely to apps built using the Yahoo! Application Platform, or YAP.
Remember Web design in the 1990s? Remember huge rectangular gray beveled buttons, wildly colorful backgrounds, and text big enough that Sarah Palin could read it from her house?
Let’s thank our lucky stars that the Web has emerged out of its awkward, pimply, puberty phase and into the much more sophisticated, data-driven, optimized, user-centric, sophisticated place that is today. But even with all the time and money we spend on getting things just right when we create our online presences, there are still some fairly rudimentary design factors that are missed all too often on personal sites, small business sites and enterprise sites across the Web.
Be artful, not artsy
One of those “why-don’t-we-know-better-yet” design factors is the placement of a big graphic front-and-center on a landing page—especially a graphic that doesn’t compel an immediate call-to-action. Not only can this push your primary content and functional calls-to-action below the fold where people may never see them, a study by Enquiro Research suggests there may be additional implications.
The study shows eye-tracking results, specifically what happens when a large graphic is placed on the page in different places. When the large image was at the bottom of the page rather than the top—pushing the calls-to-action above the fold—visitors actively engaged with the text content three times faster than when the image was at the top.
Poll: Is the Old Spice Campaign Actually Working or All Hype?
Old Spice’s bare-chested, ridiculously good-looking appearance on Twitter and YouTube had marketers, advertisers, and consumers abuzz with hope. Hope that even heritage brands can integrate TV campaigns with creative and engaging online outreach.
Study finds that combining tactics can creep people out
Advertisers want people to remember and have a response to their messages. Even hating an ad is okay if it’s persuasive and memorable. What advertisers don’t want, however, is to squander money. Yet a team of researchers discovered that’s what some expensive campaigns are doing.
A recent study looked at sales-oriented online advertising to determine the effectiveness of different approaches. The researchers confirmed that matching an ad to a website’s content increases purchase intent. They also looked at formats like takeover ads, pop-ups and video players (which the study calls “obtrusive”), and confirmed that those work too.
The surprise came when they looked at ads that combined being obtrusive with being related to the content. Instead of increasing effectiveness, those ads were relative failures. Since the researchers estimate $664 million is spent on those combination ads, there’s a lot of money possibly going to waste.
Privacy concerns Figuring out the reasons behind these results is more difficult to prove, but the researchers have a theory—people may simply think it’s creepy when an obtrusive ad matches the content being viewed. They notice the combination of tactics, start to wonder if their privacy is compromised, and become suspicious that they’re being manipulated. These negative feelings may even get projected onto the company, product or service being advertised.
Yahoo! Rich Ads in Search drives consumers using deep links
Online advertising for Hyundai is complex. Its website serves consumers throughout the purchase cycle. Yahoo! Rich Ads in Search made it easy for the car company to engage with consumers at all stages of the process by offering brand awareness via videos to upper-funnel customers and deep links with lower-funnel activities to customers ready to buy a Hyundai.
The Challenge It’s a busy time for Hyundai. With several of its models collecting awards for being best in class and as a major partner of the FIFA World Cup, Academy Awards, and sponsor of the 2010 Super Bowl pre-game show, the auto company is increasing its brand reach. These recent marketing initiatives have consumers searching online to learn more about the company. Some want to find information about a specific model while others want to find a dealership, get estimates, customize a vehicle, or simply compare vehicles. Hyundai wanted a better way of serving the wide variety of needs.
That was the challenge that Hyundai brought to search and social media agency Reprise Media. “We automatically put Yahoo! on the media plan because of its reach and audience,” says Emil Panzarino, Reprise Media’s media director for the Hyundai business. “When Yahoo! launched Rich Ads in Search, we knew that it could address a consumer’s needs regardless of where he or she was in the purchase funnel.”
The Solution
“We chose to do Rich Ads because the primary goal is to drive consumer interaction,” says Sean McDonald, account director at Reprise Media. “Rich Ads offers a video component to search results, which immediately grabs consumer attention. It also has deep links that provide more opportunities for the consumer to interact directly with the brand.”
On the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, everyone deserves access—even to digital ads
Twenty years ago, busy intersections had steep, dangerous curbs onto the pavement. Today they boast gentle ramps that help those with impaired mobility move smoothly into the crosswalk. This is thanks in no small part to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law on July 26, 1990. And just as the ADA has helped make the physical world more accessible, Yahoo! is helping make the cyber world more accessible.
Enabling the physical, digital and advertising worlds
Some 650 million people around the globe live with disabilities. Enabling everyone to move smoothly online lets users, regardless of their abilities, get the information they need, when they want it. In fact, according to the National Organization on Disability, 48% of Americans with disabilities say that the Internet has significantly improved the quality of their lives.
And with the potentially vast scale of this audience, no one can afford to say, “You can’t do that.” The purchasing power of people with disabilities tops $1 trillion, including $220 million in discretionary income, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
To demonstrate Yahoo!’s commitment to inclusion, we’re running a pair of display house ads on Yahoo! Travel: one on how to find the best sushi in your area and another for the new Hollywood summer movie, “Grown Ups.”
To learn more about the art and science of accessibility in online advertising, download our .pdf, “Making Ads Accessible.”
Challenge: Disney needed to create a captivating advertising experience closely tied to its magical new summer movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. They also wanted to leverage social media to drive buzz for the release and extend reach online.
Solution: Yahoo! used a Floating Ad takeover to create the illusion that The Sorcerer bewitched the Yahoo! Movies page. Disney’s innovative campaign also incorporates a unique social media element: a moderated Twitter feed that reposts tweets about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. In an effort to capitalize on the power of peer-to-peer recommendation, a call-to-action was added for Yahoo! users to retweet from the ad. (more…)
Video: How to do great creative that reaches a vast audience
In this video, taken from last week’s Cannes Lion Advertising Festival, Lincoln Bjorkman, Digitas’ wunderkind SVP of Creative, talks to Yahoo! VP of B2B Marketing Communications, Shane Steele, about losing pounds for the summer, re-invigorating your agency, and creating art that scales.
Look for more Yahoo! Videos from Cannes in the coming days. In the meantime, check out these great clips from advertising’s fabulous Euro-confab:
Challenge: Paramount knew they had a loyal fan base with Transformers, but they needed help figuring out how to reach existing fans as well as a broader audience that would be needed to make this release a success.
Solution: Paramount worked with Yahoo! to develop a comprehensive online plan that would help turn fans into evangelists, disseminating Transfomer excitement across the Web. Components included:
New Yahoo! login ad a boon for creativity at scale
It’s not often as a digital advertiser that you get to work with a big, blank canvas.
Yahoo! today unveiled a new display ad unit for the Yahoo! login page that gives marketers room to try just about anything to spotlight their brands in creative ways—on one of the most-trafficked destinations on the Web.
Some one in ten Americans visit the Yahoo! login page daily, providing marketers with a new, premium advertising solution to reach online audiences at a mass scale. The “take-over” execution transforms the page into a large palette for artful—and impactful—creative.
Appolicious launches the YAP app finder
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