(sa) TSIG vs L90.............
Tsig is NOT a "pure" play....
Remember TSIG is many things...
1). An e-tailor...cd's, books, dvd's, videos
2). A Teleservices company offering telephony support
3). A marketing company
Most analysis of tsig, my own included, has focused in on the "e-tail" portion of tsig.com plan. My analysis has focused particularly on the the shortcomings of other internet retailers like Amazon and CDnow particularly the high cost of branding and interruption marketing.
But in order to better understand tsig.com's business model, internet advertising has to be looked at more comprehensively. To get this comprehensive point of view, looking at what other "pure" play internet advertising companies do make ones more appreciative of tsig.com innovative model for directing traffic to both their product sites and the sites of their partners at lost costs.
The following info is from the prospectus of an IPO for L90: an advertising internet "pure" play being priced this week. After the following explanation of what L90 does are case studies of the many diverse (and not necessarily effective) ways in which L90's clients are driving or directing traffic to these clients's sites. These studies include everything from banner placement to intergrated sponsorships. When you realize the costs and complexity of such marketing strategies, you become even more appreciative of tsig.com simple non-obtrusive profit splitling offline to online third party and co-branded "cards" delivered to focused markets.
L90 is a leading provider of Internet-based advertising and direct marketing solutions for advertisers and Web publishers. They design and implement advertising campaigns for our advertising clients and strategically place their ads on our network of Web sites. They provide their Web publishing suppliers with a fully-outsourced solution which includes the sale of advertising space on their Web sites as well as the technology required to deliver advertisements.
L90' advertising clients want Web users to take actions such as visiting clients's Web sites or making an online purchase when users view advertisements. L90's Web publishing clients seek to improve the sale of advertising space, or add inventory on their Web sites. L90's design and development teams help their clients meet their objectives by creating advertising campaigns that incorporate sponsorships. Sponsorships are advertisements that employ advanced marketing techniques such as integrating advertisements into the text or graphical content of a Web page and contain features such as audio and video, co-branding between the advertiser and the Web site publisher, and interstitials, which are advertisements contained in separate Web browser windows that open up with a clients Web site. In contrast, traditional banner advertisements are typically found at the top of a Web page and frequently contain content that is unrelated to that of the Web page. Because L90's sponsorship-focused solutions are specifically designed to promote interactivity between Web user and L90's advertisers, L90 believes that their advertising campaigns are more effective than traditional banner advertisements in attracting a Web user?s attention and encouraging action.
In addition, they have developed adMonitor, their ad serving and tracking technology that is used to deliver advertisements to our network of Web site publishers. adMonitor enables L90's advertising and Web publishing clients to implement sophisticated advertising campaigns quickly and to selectively target ads to Web users based on specific interests and characteristics. AdMonitor also enables theur clients to measure and manage the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.
Unlike L90's competitors who have focused primarily on selling banner ads across a network of Web sites, L90 has developed advertising solutions that go beyond the traditional banner ad by leveraging the unique capabilities of the Internet. Their comprehensive solution combines high-value added, strategic ad campaign development services, premium Web site partners and our flexible, proprietary ad serving technology, adMonitor.
L90 works closely with both its premium Web site partners and its advertising clients to design, develop, and implement sophisticated campaigns on individual Web sites or across sites within targeted categories. These integrated advertising campaigns feature sponsorships, co-branded microsites and jump pages, content integration, rich media, sweepstakes, viral marketing, opt-in programs, e-mail marketing, and other innovative marketing tools.
**Case Studies
**Launch Media Inc. - Response Driven Direct Marketing
Launch Media, Inc. is a digital media company dedicated to creating the premier Internet destination for discovering new music. Launch was seeking to acquire new customers and introduce users to its subscription-based CD-ROM offering.
Taking advantage of our networks of Web sites, we developed a direct marketing solution for Launch designed to reach a diverse group of users and offer them a trial subscription to Launch. The program incorporates direct marketing components, such as interstitials, sweepstakes and other opt-in opportunities throughout a group of Web sites, all of which invite users to opt-in to receive 3 trial issues of the Launch CD-ROM. This effective direct marketing solution results in a monthly average of 800 user sign-ups.
***iVillage - Integrated Sponsorship Across Online and Print Media
iVillage, the leading women?s community site, offers women's health and fitness information, parenting advice, financial insight, e-mail, chat rooms and personal homepages. iVillage required an advertising campaign that would grow its market share and reach a broad demographic cross-section of women.
Our marketing and creative teams designed a comprehensive campaign that takes advantage of both the online and offline media properties of Weider Publications, which produces both print magazines, such as Shape, Men's Fitness and Muscle & Fitness, and Web sites, such as Fitness Online and Shape Online. Using our adMonitor technology, we serve targeted banner placements throughout Shape Online and the women-centric areas of Fitness Online, as well as banner placements throughout Fitness Online. In addition to the online components, the iVillage campaign includes recurring print ads in Shape magazine. These print ads are used to build brand awareness for iVillage, to drive readers to the iVillage Web site and to promote new offerings at iVillage. This campaign has been running for over nine months and receives an average click-through rate, or the number of users clicking on an advertisement, that is twice as high as the industry average. This integrated sponsorship demonstrates our ability to couple the attributes of online and offline media properties to build an effective advertising campaign.
***Tickets.com - Brand Building, Ticket Sales and Database Generation
Tickets.com is a premier online resource for event information and tickets, updating traditional ticketing distribution practices with today's Internet technology. Tickets.com required an online advertising and marketing solution that would generate brand awareness, increase market share, drive traffic to their Web site and build a targeted database.
Working closely with Tickets.com, our marketing and creative teams designed an integrated sponsorship program that is featured on three of our premium entertainment and sports Web sites. Our advertising solution places Tickets.com in contextually-relevant Web site content and positions Tickets.com as the premier ticket buying and information resource. Specifically, the Tickets.com sponsorship program utilizes a combination of content integration, contextual offers, co-branded sites within the host Web publisher's site, and sweepstakes elements to generate brand awareness for Tickets.com and drive users to the Tickets.com Web site. For example, we created a "Take Me to the Big Game" sweepstakes on Small World's Web sites that offers visitors the opportunity to win tickets to premier sporting events, including the championships of the four major professional sports.
Additionally, our adMonitor technology enables Tickets.com to capture registration details at the Web sites on which this sponsorship is featured, as well as track the movement of visitors through the Web sites. Tickets.com uses this information to create user profiles based on declared and inferred behavioral data. By building this growing database of individual user profiles, Tickets.com intends to provide customized offers, such as local sports or special interest tickets, targeted to individual Web users or groups of users. This campaign demonstrates our expertise at developing multi-pronged solutions that meet an advertiser's objective and highlights adMonitor?s targeting and database building capabilities.
***Visa - Preferred Card Placement, Market Share Penetration and Card Usage
Visa, one of the premier brand names in electronic payment methods, sought a solution that would take advantage of the Internet as a new commerce vehicle. Visa's goals were to strengthen their brand recognition, reinforce current customer loyalty and increase their overall credit card market share.
We leveraged Music Boulevard's niche as a leading e-commerce site to create a customized sponsorship for Visa. The sponsorship included "Visa, the Preferred Card" banner placements throughout the Music Boulevard site, "Visa, the Preferred Card" banner placements on all checkout pages of the site, and Visa sponsorship of Rocktropolis' AllStar Column, Classical Insites' Hall of Fame and Jazz Central Stations' Events on Music Boulevard. In addition, Visa was featured as the default payment choice on each checkout page on Music Boulevard. Moreover, if a user attempted to use another payment choice, the user was presented with a $2 coupon for use on future Music Boulevard purchases, provided that the user switched to Visa as the form of payment. Due to the success of the Visa campaign in increasing Visa's marketshare over its competitors, this campaign, which was originally scheduled to run for six months, was extended for an additional six months. |
