The difference that three years can make in an advertiser’s mentality
Both the review site Epinions.com and shopping search engine DealTime.com spent millions on advertising in 2000 – some of it, not very cost-effectively, says Sarah Leary, vice president of marketing at Shopping.com, the shopping comparison site that emerged in September from the combination of the two. Yet in November, Shopping.com became one of a small but growing number of online retail companies to revisit the pricey TV ad medium by launching a broadcast campaign. So what’s the difference between 2000 and 2003?
“We now have a lot more experience with the tool of broadcast advertising, a disciplined approach to testing it, and a product that is ready for prime time,” says Leary. Nevertheless, her comments suggest gaining institutional buy-in for a TV ad campaign after the experience of three years ago was not without its challenges, particularly as Shopping.com`s predecessors have for the last few years focused on pay-for-performance online advertising.
“For one thing, we are not spending double-digit millions out of the gate to move the needle when we don’t know yet what is going to move the needle,” she says. Shopping.com’s TV ad campaign launched Nov. 17 in a test that will run only in three markets, and only until Dec. 18, near the cut-off date set by many web retailers for holiday package delivery. New York, San Francisco and Portland, OR, were selected as test markets based on a combination of their saturation of online shoppers and the CPM of doing a campaign in those locations. Awareness and traffic at the end of the campaign in those markets will be compared with markets in which the campaign was not aired.
Leary also points out that DealTime and Epinions previously did broadcast advertising in the spring. “The retail market is all about October, November and December. This time, we did it at a time when shopping is top of mind,” she says. As an additional point, Shopping.com has developed a robust shopping experience that its predecessors were less equipped to deliver in early 2000, she adds.
Finally, the campaign sharply focuses on the amusing presentation of the single message that Shopping.com is a place to go to compare multiple stores and prices from across the web. “Shopping.com does a lot more, but we learned you have to make trade-offs about what you can communicate in 30 seconds,” she says. “You can try to communicate everything and wind up communicating nothing”
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