Reply announced early this morning their new “Enhanced Click” marketplace which claims to leverage participating marketing campaigns to more easily geographically target clicks and also monetize clicks that would otherwise not be. Bill Rice also covered the announcement here.
Lead generation has always been a balancing act between supply, demand and the demand for specific filters. In most all cases marketing campaigns generate leads that are useless and cannot be sold or monetized, but a marketing cost is incurred nonetheless. This is why many lead generation companies request that you buy in multiple categories and states. Reply’s Enhanced Clicks puts a spin on this situation that is supposed to help advertisers monetize unwanted clicks and well as help advertisers acquire wanted and sometimes hard to find clicks.
How do they do this and will it be accepted by the industry?
To be able to redirect clicks to the proper landing page Reply will require the insertion of a middle page to qualify each click for its a location. After clicking on the advertisement the user will be taken to a page where they will be asked to enter their zip code. Once this is completed they will be directed to the corresponding advertisement. Conceptually this sounds good to some, but in my opinion is the reason why this will not work.
First, I would be curious to know how this will affect Googles quality score. There is a good chance that, because of this middle page, your average CPC will go up due to a poor quality score. Second, most advertisers understand that adding even the smallest steps to a lead form increases bounces. I think this middle page will dramatically effect conversions and would be curious to know what the affect was to conversions, assuming Reply performed tests prior to launching this product.
The idea of being able to redirect unsold inventory or clicks is a one that has been proposed before and that is a good idea, but I am not convinved that it is revolutionary, worth a patent or will even work.
“Using the Reply.com Marketplace, there are no keywords to manage, no bid-management software to implement, and no need to outsource online customer acquisition to 3rd parties,” said Reply.com chairman and CEO Payam Zamani. “Instead, there are controls that allow advertisers of any size to access consumers who are looking for a particular product or service, select desirable locations, throttle volume, and dynamically set their desired price-per-click. The system automatically delivers the specified traffic, based on the advertiser’s budget.”
To not be overly critical, conceptually this seems like a really good idea, as mentioned above, and the ability to target and receive clicks with this much ease is very attractive, but can it be that easy. Aside from the increased drop off rate from the middle page, possible increased CPC for adwords campaigns another challenge, of course with any network, is liquidity. Will enough advertisers participate and add the middle page and will their be enough corresponding buyers to buy the remnant clicks?
What do you think?
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I don’t think it’s that revolutionary either–it’s also ironic, their whole schpeeal prior to this was “Go Beyond the Click” and was in fact there tag line, now it’s “click and Leads”. My view is that they should focus on the leads and stay away from diluting their message.
[Reply]
Thank you very much for the coverage, we appreciate it. I would like to address two of the issues raised as there may be some confusion in what we offer: any extra page and Google’s quality score.
Most online advertisers have consumers land on some type of a landing page after clicking on a link. To use the Reply! Click Marketplace, we aren’t asking companies to change their customer acquisition processes in any manner. Today, due to poor geo-targeted capabilities in Google and Ad Networks, we believe many companies buy traffic outside of their serviceable areas while other companies are willing to increase their online advertising spend in specific geographies where they aren’t getting enough traffic.
Reply!’s Click Marketplace can assist in two ways:
1) Once an advertiser determines the traffic falls outside their serviceable area through their normal acquisition process, we allow them to pass some basic information about the click (click type and location), redirect that click into a real-time CPC auction and convert that unmonetizable traffic into premium revenue.
2) Reply! launched a vertical PPC platform similar in concept to Overture but using categories not keywords or text ads to transact clicks. This simplification is critical to eliminate the need for complex and expensive online marketing infrastructures and large teams of expensive online experts. The Reply! Marketplace allows advertisers to purchase category-specific clicks, after consumers have indicated the product or service they are interested in and identified the geographic area where they are located. This “Enhanced Click” dramatically improves geo-targeting because the consumer tells us where they are located. With increased control and geo-targeting, advertisers can profitably move offline advertising budgets online, and move existing online budgets to where they will generate higher return on investment. Our goal is to make Internet marketing easy and profitable to businesses of all sizes.
Regarding Google’s quality score – we thoroughly tested the Click Marketplace process through our own online acquisition channels and the associated conversion funnels of search, ad networks, SEO, affiliates, SMS and email. Google quality score was not impacted. Advertisers are not changing their conversion flows in any manner and therefore consumers are not hitting the back button more often and going back to Google to conduct another search. What any advertiser does with a click post acquisition is up to them.
The point is, until now, only the most sophisticated businesses with significant investments in technology and personnel (bid management, keyword expansion, analytics, quality filtering, etc) could make online marketing through search engines and ad networks profitable.
Regarding the target market, there are numerous lead generation and service-based companies (think Yellow Pages or Classified) that acquire consumers through some form of a landing page. Many of the largest vertical markets require personal contact (either face-to-face or by phone), such as automotive, real estate, mortgage, home improvement, insurance, education, etc. As online advertising continues its market share gains at the expense of traditional media, dollars will shift from IYP and classified advertising to performance based marketing and these companies need viable solutions that make online marketing simple and profitable. We offer those companies the ability to maximize their revenue by easily purchasing clicks for specific products or service, in a precise location. This will dramatically reduce their non-serviceable clicks, reduce their investment in time and increase their ROI.
I look forward to further discussion.
For more specifics, please check out the Reply! post http://blog.reply.com/?p=101
Oh — we are still “going beyond the click” — we are focusing on transacting “Enhanced Clicks” vs raw/gross clicks.
Brian
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That looks like one of my comment posts… Nice summary Brian.
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Brian,
You say an advertiser is not required to change their customer acquisition process, then at what point are they redirecting the traffic.
Example:
I have a two page form that asks for the contact information on the second page. Until the consumer reaches that second page I will not know their location other then from their IP. If the consumer fills out the form completely and I find that I do not need that lead, is the consumer then directed to another landing page??
Please clarify.
Thanks
[Reply]
Good question and yes you are correct. Once the consumer hits your second page (or 50th page), you determine if you can or can’t service that individual. If you can’t, you have the option of redirecting that click (in real-time) into the Reply! Click Marketplace where buyers have active campaigns waiting to purchase clicks.
We have some companies buying nationally so we always have coverage and we have smaller companies buying individual cities. We already have healthy liquidity.
A point of clarification, as a buyer of the click, you have complete control on where and how the click is directed into your site and we are finding that many companies land consumers on webpages that are pre-populated with the requested information. This handshake dramatically improves conversion.
Check it out – it only takes about 3 minutes to get started. Let me know what you think.
Brian
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Wow – just like Surehits has been doing for years and years.
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Yep,JB..
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Perhaps we can get someone from Surehits to respond directly. It appears that similar in that they are requested the consumer to define their location. The difference is that a consumer is still required to click on an advertisers listing once they verify their location. It appears their process requires yet another step from consumers and as a seller, it doesn’t allow me to liquidate my unsold inventory through an auction without the consumer being forced to make another advertiser selection. Similar but very different. I could see them as a potential partner in the Reply.com Click Marketplace.
[Reply]