Web chat service Meebo, always innovative with advertising, is trying out something fairly aggressive: full takeover ads that show a persistent advertisement in the background.
The company says that they already got 1% or higher click throughs on existing ads units on the site, which included rollovers at the bottom of the screen and another unit right in the middle. But the new units actually take over the entire background of the site, meaning users are literally slammed with the messaging. They are presented with an option of removing the add with a click.
And the users don’t seem to mind at all.
Founder/CEO Seth Sternberg wrote a blog post today on the new ads and asked for user feedback. Most of the 100+ comments to the post are very positive. Example comments:
“Awesome…Black is a really nice look for Meebo…The ad is really subtle, too — not all up in your face…“Did we strike a good balance between not disturbing your use of Meebo, while acknowledging the need to run ads?”…Hell to the yes!”
“I read your message about why the background changed and everything, and I definitely agree with what you’re saying. (Especially the sucky, flashy ads that cover your page you’re trying to view). With that said, nice work! I actually really like the way the ad is incorporated into the background, and slightly opaque. It’s not too distracting, and if the ads are helping you guys out, by all means, keep doing it this way! : )”
“I think this is a brilliant way to put ads up without being obtrusive and annoying. No one likes banner ads or popups. This does look like a good balance. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but know the need for them to support your business, and the fact that you concidered your clientell in your design means a lot. It means my willingness not to click the ‘backtoblue’ button and get rid of it because it simply being there and me not clicking is paying you for a job well done.”
YouTube, ESPN, MySpace and others have tried similar ads in the past, and these things command great fees. If Meebo really has gotten the users to buy into this, we may be seeing similar stuff all over the place, and soon.
Wow, there is an innovator for you. It looks like Meebo might actually be on to something here…
There have been lots of change in Meebo. Last time (almost 6 months or so) when I accessed Meebo and today when I did it again; there were lots of changes in the site which I really liked.
Meebo might become a popular website of the Year.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
In essence then, innovation means changing some ignored/unnoticed quality/characteristic/parameter of your product/service and making it valuable.
It may involve finding a market or even creating one depending on who you are.
Incremental innovation offers the best economic results and pulls up the performance standard as a whole. Google Chrome for example. They waited till times became just right. And then they rolled their mighty developer cannons in the direction of the browser wars. The planning, patience and confidence of Google, as shown by Google Chrome, impresses me the most. Totally stealthy and took everyone by surprise.
For example, let us see what is neglected in this techcrunch interface that could have been done all this while but has not been done yet?
(the one closest to my typing area is the Seesmic video comment option – not seen on blogs a while ago)
A tree widget to jump to comments – which are tree-like anyway? So you dont scroll up and down, but click up and down?
Note that not all additions/modifications are good innovations. Meebo users could have “booed out the rampant commercialization” too.
Auto-increasing comment box? Overkill, IMO.
OpenID commenting with embedded profiles?
The list is endless. But a few things would be “solid gold” – ummm – yes! – linking Post[M].Comment[N] to Post[P].Comment[Q]
The top most tab row could float down optionally controlled by a client-side cookie setting. So you don’t have to scroll up and down or TC team does not have to put links to generic standard links (”Checkout their CrunchBase entry _here_”)
Featured Posts in slide sorter format, etc.
But of course, as a very recent blog post about Facebook relenting said, (damn, where’s that link…) we’d get CamelBase
Mouse gestures are known to find acceptance in certain user demographics.
That’s for this page. I guess it is similar for products and services in all industries – just take one boring/painful practice and remove the hurting part and add a new helpful part. But this really needs the hacker spirit.
And to make *money* , you need a hundred other things to fall in place.
My $0.02, HTH.
Have to give credit where it’s due, I think it’s an awesome idea. Advertisers will love it and yeah, with the black shading – users shouldn’t be complaining.
Noticed this tonight too, great execution. This along with those new jumbo ads are smart, and not as annoying as you’d imagine.
What Jumbo ads?
I signed on for the first time and it wasn’t bad at all. Much Much better than the bland blue….. really cool
Friendly polite chat
http://bubble12...p.blogspot.com/
Meebo is always a step ahead when it comes to innovation… great idea!
Good Work! Not many major players out there would have the ‘ad balls’ to try something actually different!
Fun to see someone think of user experience AND revenue instead of just butchering one or the other.
More proof that there indeed is money to be made, and innovations to be found if you care and dare enough!
what are you talking about? this is basically skinning the page which almost every site in existence has been doing for a few years now.
doesn’t seem like you know what you’re talking about.
It wouldn’t work for all the sites/services out there. It works on Meebo because such a big part of the screen is blank prior to sign in.
And anyone who thinks beyond annoying banner ads needs encouragement. Yeah, yeah, I have ABP isntalled, but I still hate the banner concept.
Way to go, playing to your strengths, Meebo.
I have to agree…. i don’t see the big deal. Skinning a site is nothing new. There just fading the ad images a little. I guess this is the exciting thing ????
I think that it is innovative because they have figured out how to get the biggest ad placement possible without pissing off the users to the extent that they leave. Perhaps it is not so much innovative as it is gutsy.
well pissing of people is very subjective.. i loved the new facebook layout, but i guess millions of other people didn’t agree with me
. The fact that adblock can’t block it pisses me off
I was just thinking about meebo, what they are doing nowadays when all eyes are on twitter
Meebo took almost 40 million investment and probably make $80-$200k/mo or some paltry amount, even with this ad format. This ad format is not a business model, and they don’t have one. Who the hell wants to click an ad during the middle of chatting with their friend? Meebo took too much money…so they’re screwed.
Clicking is overrated. When you watch a tv commercial, you’re not clicking anything. It’s there, it’s big, it’s in your face, and through repetition, you remember it. Hey, next time you’re looking to purchase, you might even think of it.
Meebo did a good job with this. I’d rather go to this than stupid Google AdSense everywhere. At least this can look nice.
I don’t mind it at all. Looks good actually.
Any money is welcome these days…isn’t it!
agree with needairjan. there’s nothing about meebo that makes me want to dump my IM client. and they never added anything to the service that would distinguish it from the core services they were wrapping.
in the age of twitter, meebo is irrelevant. its astounding that 40 mln was poured into this sink. its almost unfathomable how badly valley VCs have allocated capital
Agreed. I noticed it today and it didn’t bother me. It wasn’t intrusive at all, yet (ironically), the ad was in your face. You couldn’t miss it.
Simultaneously in your face and yet not intrusive. Go figure. But they pulled it off.
That ad could very well be my computer background, beautiful!
I actually rather see that page then the one with the blue background.
literally slammed? ouch.
My head literally exploded when I read that.
BAD BAD user experience techniques. They have no business model as the traffic they’re getting is probably the most un-targeted you could imagine. I have used their tool, it’s useful, but I won’t pay to use it and am very unlikely to click their ads.
Their only option to make some money is using Google’s new ad targeting systems, who know what interests visitors based on past visits to Google’s HUGE publishes network.
http://adsense....h-ads-that.html
My advice, Meebo – try the new Google ads.
Yes, they should carry Google ads…because everyone wants to know how to make 10MM in two weeks…
Because it is free and people like something free and easy to use
Typo here – “removing the add with a click”. Cheers.
I’m surprised Yahoo, MSN, etc even let these guys get away with basically stealing their service and slapping ads on it. Especially considering they (Yahoo/MSN, etc) are trying to use their own ads.
I have to agree Needairjan Sudkiakz.
Its great to see Meebo innovating – but seriously with $40 million in funding – $15 less than twitter but no where near the hype – they must be wanting a $300+ million sale at least.
I would just love someone to explain to me – how this service would sell for that even if they were pushing 20% click throughs ……
Lets assume they have cash reserves for 2 years – I am just not convinced that they could sell themselves for that amount of money. If they start looking for another round – who would jump in ?
I think Meebo need to solidify their strategy – and focus more on their mobile phone strategy. Package the service as a really easy IM mobile phone client across all platforms and sell this services to businesses as a highly scalable service that could be hosted. Then its simple to charge a small amount per month per user to these businesses or derive more suitable models as appropriate.
Much more business in something like this – than simply putting together a model that relies on 2-3% click through and full page ads.
Then again, I may be alone in my thinking …..
Making easy money, that work’s.
This is not a new idea. Ekşi Sözlük, a Turkish very popular interactive dictionary, has been using the same method for years.
CazCaz.Net
I like the new Meebo ad strategy but the ESPN ad you link to at the bottom of the post in my opinion has no similarity at all. The Subway ads on ESPN are bright, in your face and distract completely from the rest of the content. I remember when ESPN launched the current redesign at the beginning of the year and they had it plastered in a similar way with Ford F-150 ads. I can’t find the link to the blog post they had set up for feedback, but the user response was about 99-1 negative.
Though there is one big Ad unit , still i would say it is looking great.
How is this innovative? Pandora’s been doing this for years…
Pandora has been using a similar implementation of this idea for a while. Although in the case of Pandora, the ad changes when the user interacts with the player (skip songs, rate, etc). This way more than one advertiser/sponsor could benefit from the eye balls.
I wonder if this would be the next step in the meebo implementation and whether tit will eventually get applied to their embedded player/chat room.
It is a great idea, even if 20% of the users hate it SO what. If 1 or 2% click on it, it is just as good as banner ad’s as long as usability doesn’t suffer.
At first I thought I had been taken over my spyware, but then read the Meebo explanation. It is better than more intrusive advertising.
I love Meebo and I like the fact that is free. If it requires some unobtrusive advertising, I guess that’s the price we pay. Pun intended.
How is this different than what GameSpot (as well as others) have been doing for years? Check out http://gdc.gamespot.com/ or http://www.game....html?navclk=pc .
Personally, I love how GameSpot integrates the ad into the layout of the site. The current Verizon one isn’t that great, but there have been some really good ones in the past.
i almost always use meebo – more often so than the actual yahoo messenger client.
i just disable the ads and use a custom skin
Just a quick note, you might want to blur the image a bit more. I could read the usernames of every single contact listed, as could anyone else with good eyes.
Meebo is deleting all of the negative feedback so the blog isn’t telling the real story- sorry meebo
it’s cool