Reply.com, a San Ramon-based online marketing company, has launched a new PPC Click Marketplace that it hopes will give small businesses that don’t typically have large ad budgets access to highly targeted advertising. Reply.com CMO Brian Bowman says that while other ad platforms offer geo-targeted ads, they tend to be more expensive than normal ad campaigns, and are also prone to incorrectly assessing a web user’s location.
Conversely, he says that Reply is offering smaller, more targeted campaigns that rely on user input to ensure that the ads are relevant and the users are engaged. He says that the platform is similar to Overture’s PPC offering, but instead of relying on text ads and keywords, Reply.com is using categories (like automobiles or real estate).
The system primarily relies on inserting a ‘middle-page’ between each ad and the ultimate destination. After clicking on an ad, users are prompted to enter basic information depending on what industry the ad is associated with. Browsers clicking on an automobile ad might be asked their zip code and the the make and model of the car. Depending on the user input, Reply will send the user to one of the advertisers from its pool of participants in the Click Marketplace.
In the past, advertisers had a hard time monetizing clicks they had already paid for, but weren’t relevant to their company because the user was outside of their target audience – beyond using Comission Junction, displaying a page full of AdSense ads or requesting an Email address, there was little they could do to recoup the cost of the wasted click. Using Reply’s Click Marketplace, these advertisers can pass these “premium clicks” on to a company that is relevant to the visitor’s stated location and interest.
While using this system of inserting a ‘middle page’ to gather information will likely see many users leave without ever visiting an advertiser, advertisers on the platform will know that visitors who do wind up clicking through are genuinely interested in their product.
Update:This post has been updated to further clarify the new marketplace.
A couple years ago I read something about doing this. It was only possible in theory back then. I think it was called a Landing Page….
LOLCOPTER
you name it
I actually think this is a very cool idea. As someone who might be interested in buying clicks and generating traffic to my site, I love the idea that the traffic will be local and interested in what I have to offer. This isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of online marketing, in my estimation. Rather, it’s an opportunity to supplement my existing marketing efforts in a cost-effective manner. I may just check it out.
always been scammers
http://www.ripo...pOff0368428.htm
i agree with the above. reply.com is a scam operation with zero ethics.
Great, another option for webmasters.
Let’s hope it will be worthy..
Good one. A kind of similar business model: http://www.reachlocal.com.
Hm, engaging someone to click on an ad is hard enough. I think if someone does click on an ad the expectation is not to have to provide any info but get the promise of the ad fulfilled immediately. Any middle page would shy me away instantly thinking it might be another scam page. Locally targeted ads are a good idea but I am curious if others would react the same way as me with this approach?
Interesting post. Im not sure this is really big news thought.
This is *not* the right way to do this. The ad server should have a guesstimate by IP of the user’s location and then further refine based on advertiser’s data (maybe an API?)
I can’t see people entering their zip code to get an ad served.
I assume that whoever has built this service has already played 100k’s with PPC and Landing pages and CPA promotions and knows the attrition rate that happens when forcing users to take another action before passing them off. It probably also means they can charge their advertisers 4x-5x as much for every lead that comes through as that will be calculated as a commited user.
Is it me- or is Techcrunch covering more unnewsworthy
events to keep its post per day high.
This is newsworthy, its interesting.
http://www.Geocade.com has different track – geo centric ad’s as a component of localized high score leaderboards.
Totally off topic but is anyone else getting a debug message from the video ad that TC have running on their site? It’s getting really annoying, every time I open the homepage I can 2 popups which say “Where is the debugger or host application running? Localhost or Other machine”. I have done a bit of research and it looks like a problem with Flex, someone has published the Ad without disabling the debugger I think.
Anyway if any of the TC team see this please remove the ad or get them to sort it. Or if anyone else knows what the problem is (it could be my end) then please let me know.
Cheers
Mike
I don’t know, I think it’s pretty interesting.
My suggestion would be for this to be only available to sites that require some sort of a registration. Even blogs that use commenting services can use this. Once a user has to type in their info, add an extra box for zip code. Then transfer this info over to the web server and voila.
Going back onto subject, by the time I see a fill-in box, I would have pressed back already.
only problem with this company is that it’s AWFUL to work for. A friend of mine worked there.. it’s a boiler room. they give you a day and half of training and then if you are not closing deals in a day or two – they throw you out the door. and the ego’s in the management team is crazy. I don’t hold much hope for these guys, no matter how good the idea.
Google “Ben Behrouzi” who is a reply.com co founder to learn more about why your friend had the bad experience he did working for reply.com.
cool service
Jason – thank you for the coverage, much appreciated. Let me clarify what Reply! released and why it is important. We announced the release of the world’s first marketplace for Enhanced Clicks. In essence, we launched a vertical PPC platform similar in concept to Overture but we use categories not keywords or text ads to transact clicks.
Reply!’s marketplace reduces cost and complexity associated with locally targeted online marketing by providing easy access to city-level, product- or service-specific clicks. 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.
Also, until today there was no platform or secondary market for search & ad networks clicks. By that I mean, clicks that an advertiser has already purchased but it falls outside of their serviceable area today are frequently redirected to an AdSense or Commission Junction page or worse, added to a email CRM / drip campaign. Reply! allows advertisers to purchase or sell 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 the value and conversion potential of the click because the consumer has gone through a 2-click process to specify intent and location.
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-servicable clicks, reduce their investment in time and increase their ROI.
By eliminating the need for complex and expensive online marketing infrastructures and large teams of experts, we hope to make Internet marketing available to businesses of all sizes. In fact, based on our use of the platform internally, we have found it to be a highly-profitable alternative to solutions offered by Google and ad networks.
You can check out our presentation at http://www.slid...ce-presentation
Read our press release at http://blog.reply.com/?p=101
Or better yet, set up an account, it only takes 3 minutes to start buying high-targeted clicks.
I look forward to more feedback and by the way, Reply! has raised over $20 million in funding. Our primary investor is ScaleVP that by itself has invested over $12 million.
Brian
It’s a good idea, all it needs are eyes really. Will it have the reach to really bring decent exposure to advertisers? That will be the real question.
The comment from Brian Bowman seems to be a diplomatic way of saying, there ain’t no rampant click-fraud at Reply! unlike at you-know-where, and that’s what Reply! is about.
If we weren’t working on an in-house project which pursues a different solution to the same problem, I’d wholeheartedly support this company.
“while other ad platforms offer geo-targeted ads, they tend to be more expensive than normal ad campaigns, and are also prone to incorrectly assessing a web user’s location”
Google offers this. There’s no surcharge. And even if there were targeting errors, why wouldn’t bid pricing reflect the value given the huge marketplace?
I think you’re far more likely to get dicked on price, targeting or click-fraud by these upstart, fly-by-night providers with rather humble technology.
theres more. hurt employees from Reeeeply are brewing a backstage blog proxy warfare with good old benny boy…2 biggest egos on the planet!
http://www.tech...-will-ever-use/
http://www.go-b...have-in-common/
Reply is a sinking ship. Instead of hiring employees that could not make it at Yahoo! (wink wink at Brian Bowman) they should have gone after some one like Rudy Bachraty of Trulia.
http://siteanal...com+trulia.com/
Can i purchase purchase or sell category-specific clicks. And how many visitors are available
Im going to let everyone know reply.com is another scam by payam zamani. Who was fired from autoweb.com and which was later sued! Google autoweb lawsuit
These reply.com guys are scammers and have been for years! I was just recently scammed out of my money with leads that have numbers that don’t work but they promise the world to you. Should have done my research first!