Involve consumers in online ads, Yahoo marketing exec tells retailers
The Internet is a great medium to involve target audiences in marketing and retailers should use it for that purpose, David Riemer, vice president marketing solutions at Yahoo Inc. told the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association’s Retail Advertising Conference in Chicago Thursday afternoon. “You want to give people the opportunity to spend time with your whole advertising campaign,” Riemer said.
A successful and innovative campaign that also demonstrated how the Internet can be used effectively as a marketing vehicle was one that Gap Inc. ran last year. That campaign tested a number of interactive ads on Yahoo. Part of the campaign included allowing consumers to provide feedback about the ad and to print a coupon that was good at Gap stores. Gap then used that feedback to determine the sequence and frequency of its TV ads, Riemer said. He added that Gap also experienced an increase in store shoppers due to the online coupons.
Another successful campaign that leveraged the power of the Internet was for Gateway Inc., Riemer said. When consumers clicked on a Gateway box ad, a computer jumped out of the ad and hopped around the user’s screen. He said consumers were intrigued enough by the ad that many clicked it multiple times to watch the computer dance.
Rimer said Yahoo is also getting ready to tap the power of instant messages for advertising. “We’re getting really excited about this,” he said. Yahoo has about 30 million instant message users, he said.
The Retail Advertising & Marketing Association is a division of the National Retail Federation.
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