Industry Eye: Shop Talk - March 2010

Q: "We've been using Google Ad Manager to serve our internal promotional banners, but unfortunately, the benefits of scheduling, tracking, testing and inventory control can't outweigh the cost of the painfully slow load times it's created. Are there any other solutions out there? Any suggestions or research would be gratefully accepted!"
—Renee Racine-Kinnear, director of online customer experience at Indigo Books & Music

A: There are several other companies that can help serve your ads — BittAds, OpenX (a hosted solution) and Trafficspaces to name a few — all of them have different strengths and weaknesses. Trafficspaces, for example, has an easy-to-use self-service interface, and OpenX is a bit pricey comparatively. The only way you'll know which one you like is to try it out. They almost all have free trials and/or money-back guarantees.

With that said, most of the companies you'll look at are really designed for you to place your ads on someone else's network or networks. It's not that they won't work for self-serving ads, but that's not exactly how they're intended, and thus all are a bit cumbersome for that purpose. (And yes, Google is a bit slower than some of the other choices out there, but you can't beat the price!)

Looking at your site, your system doesn't seem very complicated. Perhaps I'm missing something, but you may want to consider building your own management program internally and using one of the free tracking methods to help with analytics. A lot of companies do this, and though they don't always have the bells and whistles outside programs offer, they're speedy and pretty much guaranteed to be the way you want them.

—Amy Africa is the chief imagination officer of web consulting firm Eight by Eight. Reach Amy at amy@amyafrica.com.

Said on the Web

"Daily Conversion Optimization tip: Test adding more info popups vs new pages to keep visitors on the page."
Tweeted by @chrisgoward, Jan. 6

"We can all identify lots of improvements we'd like to see on our sites, but it's the improvements our customers most need that will drive our best growth."
Kevin Ertell, Retail: Shaken Not Stirred blog, Dec. 8

"I have to admit I'm a big fan of 'hover' (or 'mouseover') features in web design. Anything that spares me a click or pop up window wins points with me as a shopper. I've spotted several retailers using this effect creatively, beyond the typical image zoom or flyout menu."
Linda Bustos, Get Elastic blog, Jan. 6

"The more channels in which consumers interact with your brand, the more likely they'll buy."
Jim Gilbert, The Gilbert Direct Marketing Blog, Dec. 11

"In 2010, consider going to quieter places. Everyone is running to Google. It's competitive there, and very complicated these days. Maybe you might want to focus your efforts on another search engine where you can end up higher on the list. I know people who use Ask.com all the time."
Lois Geller, Joy of Direct Marketing blog, Dec. 18