Take Control of Your Maps

We live in the era of Google Maps. What started off as an impressive refresh of Mapquest-style maps now fuels web mashups. With APIs official and unofficial, Google Maps is simple enough for front-end designers to embed and for back-end programmers to target. Along the way to becoming nearly ubiquitous, it has played a major role in the “democratization of mapping.” For the practical developer who wants to add geospatial information to a site or application, the Google Maps API has been an easy call.

But, perhaps no longer...ask yourself this question: why would you, as a website developer who controls all aspects of your site, from typography to layout, to color palette to photography, to UI functionality, allow a big, alien blob to be plopped down in the middle of your otherwise meticulously designed application? >>Full Story

Thoughts// Visualization through dynamic mapping is a core function of most—if not all—destination sites and the majority of us (including yours truly) are fixated on using a Google, Yahoo or Live "mash up" maps. While these third party applications are for the most part practical, affordable, and accessible, the ultimate downside is that they come with a loss of branding.

This thought provoking article explores the increasingly accessible world of custom map development through open source platforms. While custom map development does come at a slightly higher upfront cost than the free third party API's, these costs could be mitigated if the development is deployed over a long term.

But...if neither custom map development nor using API tools from Google fits your budget, smaller DMO's might have another mapping option out there. Yes, this is a shameless plug...but, a former colleague at Travel Oregon, Sean Egusa, recently left us to form his own mapping application, SideStreet. SideStreet allows organizations to provide "personality" based mapping by providing an application to turn existing PDF's, JPGs or GIFs into an interactive guide.

You've Got Mail 2.0

Ignore Orkut, OpenSocial, Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360. Google and Yahoo have come up with new and very similar plans to respond to the challenge from MySpace and Facebook: They hope to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services (iGoogle and MyYahoo) into social networks.

Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph — the connections between people. That’s why the social networks offer to import the e-mail address books of new users to jump-start their list of friends. Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Saul Hansell at the New York Times gave readers a glimpse into some potentially big plans for internet giants Yahoo! and Google via the Bits blog. While the story is quite in-depth and a good summary of what these two companies might be planning, the subtle hint for any email marketer comes in this line from Yahoo!'s Brad Garlinghouse:

First, the e-mail service is made more personal because it displays messages more prominently from people who are more important to you. Yahoo is testing a method that can automatically determine the strength of your relationship to someone by how often you exchange e-mail and instant messages with him or her.

Makes sense, I would rather see the emails from my family and friends before emails from HP or AT&T. And there is the problem for marketers...displays messages more prominently from people who are more important to you...read, your email about a fare sale on airline X is going to be visually less important than an email from Aunt Ruth.

Granted, this type of program is not going to happen overnight...no need to start canceling your email campaigns...but as a good marketer it is something you should be thinking of. And more importantly, start thinking about how you are communicating with your email database currently. Is your database a loyal collection of consumers who want and enjoy your emails or is it a huge list of names that you blast correspondence to every once and a while?

Engage your email database and create a relationship with them. So that your email is not discarded to the bottom of the pile.

Out-of-Context Ads Prove Effective

New research casts doubt on the long-held belief that advertising is most effective when placed near content related to the product.

Yahoo! and MediaVest recently studied a group of consumers passionate about a particular subject area. Product ads displayed out of context had roughly the same impact on brand preference as identical placements shown next to related content. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Not the most ground-breaking study, but still some important data about contextual versus behavioral targeting. Logically, behavioral targeting should be a step-up from contextual targeting. Behavioral targeting takes advantage of a person's interests regardless of what website they may be browsing, while contextual targeting places ads on websites with similar content.

The article does suggest that 'the long-held belief that ads shown in context are more valuable than those seen out of context', which is almost correct. It should note that the ads shown out of context are not merely shown on an unrelated website, but to target consumers on an unrelated website...which is a big difference.

Even with these study results, advertisers should conduct their own research on which type of delivery method produces the best ROI or click-thru rate. In addition, even if your ad is targeted at the right audience, a more important factor may be the creative execution of the ad itself.

Travel Trends - Yahoo! MapMixer, PayPal

Yahoo! MapMixer - An interesting addition to the Yahoo! Local / Map offering, MapMixer allows users to combine existing maps with the Yahoo! Maps program. In the example above, a user has taken a detailed map of Grand Canyon National Park and created a new map containing both maps. The site lets users zoom, pan and explore the map in the same fashion as the normal Yahoo! Maps site. Microsoft Research has a similar product called MSR MapCruncher.
http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer

PayPal Your Airline Tickets - Following the lead from Northwest Airlines, several carriers including Southwest, Midwest and US Airways now accept payment via the online e-commerce firm PayPal. JetBlue began allowing customers to pay via Bill Me Later, a similar product earlier this year.

Virgin Mobile Causing A Stir With Flickr Photos

Virgin Mobile has been accused of breaching people's "moral rights" after it took images from a popular photo-sharing website without asking permission and used them in a national advertising campaign.

People around the world who posted their photos on the Yahoo-owned Flickr website have objected to their images being used in hundreds of Australian billboard ads, accompanied by provocative captions. >>Full Story | Flickr Posts | Virgin Mobile Campaign

Thoughts// An intriguing story from Australia that appears to be one of the first situations to test the Creative Commons (see Word of the Week post about Creative Commons) licensing agreement. In short, Virgin Mobile Australia is using Flickr-posted photos in a current ad campaign. These photos were posted on Flickr under the Creative Commons license, which (under this particular license) allows anyone to use them for any purpose. Virgin Mobile did not contact each of the photo owners to let them know about the campaign, which, was not technically necessary. However, considering the amount of negative posts in response to the campaign, Virgin Mobile might have been better served to at least notify the photographers prior to the campaign launch.

The real sticky part of this whole debate deals with the photos that show people. Virgin Mobile did not receive a photo release for the talent, but the Creative Commons license does not fully address the issue of talent. What becomes especially tough for Virgin Mobile is that not only have they used a photo without the 'blessing' of the photographer or the talent, but that some of the talent in the photos are underage.

The lesson for Virgin Mobile or anyone else using publicly-hosted photos is to notify the photographers prior to using their photos, especially if they are for a commercial advertisement. A quick email from Virgin Mobile to these photographers would have created a group of Virgin brand evangelists, instead of a rash of bad publicity.

Yahoo Launches Behavior-Based SmartAds

Yahoo today launches behavior-based SmartAds, a product that epitomizes the blending of brand and direct response advertising. It allows advertisers to target their message and creative on-the-fly and triggered by online user behavior.

For example, a user based in San Francisco who frequents the Boxing page on Yahoo Sports and recently searched for "Vegas deals" might get a "smart" display ad from an airline featuring the customized offer and creative: "Fly San Francisco to Las Vegas for Fight Night - $99." >> Full Story

Thoughts// Some very interesting technology from Yahoo!. The new SmartAds offering will give advertising creative even more relevance to the end user. What remains to be seen is how all of this 'smart advertising' will affect user's trust...will they accept the ad as helpful or see the ad as a little too invasive? Note that Yahoo! will launch the new service first in the Travel category.

Web, computer "widgets" offer branding opportunities

Pop quiz: What technology is on the cusp of changing the face of Internet advertising as we know it?

Answer: Widgets.

Simply put, widgets are mini-applications that offer easy access to Internet-based content and information. What makes them special is that they do so without requiring users to visit a specific Web site. >>Full Story

Thoughts// An excellent article on the growing widget trend. The line 'Desktop widgets are downloadable tools that provide access to information, content or services without requiring one to launch a Web browser.' is a near perfect definition. As the article alludes to, the trick is creating a widget that provides valuable content to your users...and a valuable branding / advertising opportunity for the marketer.

Orbitz's Away.com Leverages Social Commerce with Ask & Answer

Away.com, a subsidiary of Orbitz Worldwide, has signed on as one of the first major sites to use Bazaarvoice's new Ask & Answer service--bolstering purchase decisions by allowing users to post and respond to specific product and service questions right alongside standard product information. >>Full Story

Thoughts// As the article alludes to, the popularity of the new Yahoo Answers offering is beginning to cause a ripple effect through the online world. While there have been numerous Q&A sites that have tried and failed to gather an audience, integrating this Q&A function into an already existing site (travel, healthcare, financial) does provide another level of service for the users. The primary difference between this feature and a FAQ section or a Live Chat solution, is that the section is available within the actual page, rather than a click or two away from the original content.

While the service has not launched across the entire site yet, we will continue to monitor the success of this new feature and determine possibilities for a similar service on arizonaguide.com.

Yahoo Travel Gets More Personal With Users and Advertisers

Yahoo has enhanced its Yahoo Travel portal in order to bring users more personalized travel info destination and advertisers more effective lead generation. The revamp adds both user-generated content and behavioral targeting functionality to the site's three main components--Trip Planner, Travel Guides, and the FareChase comparison search engine--in addition to improved mapping and instant-messaging capabilities.

Thoughts// This update to Yahoo Travel expands on the review feature and adds a deeper level of user-generated content to the site. The most interesting part of the update is the behavioral targeting capabilities. Using a person’s preferences, activity history (what destinations have you clicked on) and similar user activity (which users are you similar to, and what have they clicked on) Yahoo Travel is now able to recommend specific, relevant destinations to each user. This behavioral targeting strategy also takes advantage of tagging (folksonomies). The targeting obviously works best when the user is logged into Yahoo Travel. With such a deep level of user preferences and tracking, this update was the next logical step for Yahoo Travel.