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Sep

30

Reply.com Launches Home Improvement

Posted by Reply! Public Relations
Filed Under Online Marketing, Press Releases | 3 Comments 

Reply! Announces World’s First
Home Improvement Marketplace and Exchange For Leads and Enhanced Clicks™

San Ramon, CA—September 30, 2009—Reply.com (www.reply.com), a leader in locally-targeted online marketing, today announced a significant expansion of its platform into the Home Improvement vertical. The initial list of Home Improvement customers includes many of the industry’s top companies. Having already demonstrated success in the Automotive and Real Estate sectors, Reply.com is rapidly expanding into this highly fragmented category.

“Reply.com has simplified category-specific and locally-targeted online marketing,” stated Andrew Rogers, Vice President of Marketing at ServiceMagic. “The marketplace makes it easy for ServiceMagic to reach our desired customers without the complexity associated with other online advertising channels.”

With the launch of this new vertical, Reply.com has created the first open marketplace and exchange for the acquisition of online consumer traffic interested in Home Improvement services. Reply.com’s patent-pending marketplace provides granular controls over bids, coverage, quality, and budgets. In five minutes, an advertiser can sign up, create a campaign for buying leads or Enhanced Clicks™, and receive locally-targeted, high-intent consumer traffic.

“I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Home Improvement as our latest category” said Reply.com Founder and CEO Payam Zamani. “I’m even more excited that we are launching with partnerships already established with some of the biggest names in Home Improvement.”

Reply!’s Marketplace offers:

  • Category-specific, locally-targeted online marketing on a cost-per-lead or cost-per-Enhanced Click™ basis
  • Easy user interface, with no keywords or text ads to manage
  • Auction-based, market-driven pricing

To maximize advertiser ROI, Reply! has also launched an advertiser-side exchange that efficiently allows for monetization of poorly-targeted traffic acquired from any online channel. Advertisers can quickly recover wasted online spend by making it available to buyers through Reply!’s platform. Reply.com’s Marketplace and Exchange offer highly-efficient, locally-targeted consumer acquisition opportunities for large, sophisticated advertisers—as well as individual service providers—on a per-lead or per-Enhanced Click™ basis.

Sep

9

Reply.com Brings on Board Top Real Estate Firms

Posted by Reply! Public Relations
Filed Under Online Marketing, Press Releases | 1 Comment 

Marketplace Dramatically Improves ROI for Online Real Estate Marketing

San Ramon, CA – September 9, 2009 — Reply.com (www.reply.com), a leader in locally-targeted online marketing, announced that prominent companies in the real estate industry now leverage Reply.com’s Marketplace to efficiently gain access to geo-targeted real estate consumers. The list of customers includes some of the top companies in the real estate industry, such as: Weichert Lead Network, Intelius, ZipRealty, LeadtoRealty, Market Leader, MultipleListing.com, RealtyStore.com, and RealEstate.com.

Reply.com’s patent-pending platform acts as a catalyst, bringing locally-targeted ad dollars online by providing advertisers granular control over bids, coverage, quality, and budgets. In five minutes, an advertiser using Reply.com’s platform can sign up, create a campaign for buying leads or Enhanced Clicks™, and receive geo-targeted high intent traffic. Reply.com’s Marketplace allows for highly-efficient, locally-targeted consumer acquisition, even for large lead generation companies.

“Reply.com has made online marketing more relevant by localizing and simplifying it,” said Reply.com Founder and CEO Payam Zamani, “Moreover, Reply.com has made it easier to reach the desired customer, in the precise location, without the typical complexities associated with paid search or display marketing. Leading CPC and display platforms require a level of expertise that discourages millions of local advertisers from migrating their advertising spend online. We enable local advertisers to come online without needing to hire an agency or become experts in paid search, making Internet marketing profitable and user-friendly for businesses of all sizes.”

Companies are increasingly looking for advertising formats that connect them with consumers at a critical decision or purchase point. Market Leader (NASDAQ: LEDR), a leading marketing partner to real estate professionals, has benefited as both a buyer and seller in Reply.com’s Marketplace.

  • As a buyer within the Reply.com Marketplace, Market Leader supports the growth of HouseValues, JustListed, Growth Leader, Team Leader, and RealtyGenerator, which require customized advertising based on geography, number of agents in the region, and depth of online presence.
  • As a seller in the Reply.com Advertiser Exchange, Market Leader auctions consumer traffic that falls outside its coverage areas to Reply.com, which enables them to monetize poorly-targeted ad spend that in the past would have been wasted.

Thad Westhusing, Vice President of Advertising at Market Leader, summarized the benefits this way: “The Reply.com Marketplace has provided us access to qualified real estate traffic that is targeted to the specific geographies we are advertising on behalf of our customers. Along the way, our advertising has become more cost-effective as a result of monetizing traffic from market areas we cannot serve today. Utilizing Reply.com’s Marketplace has been an efficient and effective way to grow our business.”

Sep

8

Quality Score vs. Business Goals

Posted by Michael Villanueva, Senior Marketing Analyst, SEM
Filed Under Online Marketing | 3 Comments 

After attending the Advanced Paid Search session at SES San Jose, I noticed that most of the questions asked were geared toward Quality Score. One person asked, “Besides CTR, what is the most important factor when determining Quality Score?” Funny thing is, all the panelists replied CTR! The components that make up Quality Score include the relevancy of the keyword, ad copy, and landing page all tied together. Each piece alone—and the three together—points back to CTR.

SEM professionals agree that when writing ad copy, CTR and conversion usually don’t correlate in the same direction. The more targeted ad copy is, the better conversion rate it will have, but then the CTR will not be as strong.

There will be those few instances when you can achieve your business conversion goals while increasing your CTR at the same time. PPC experts can have their cake and eat it too when testing ad copy if they remember to do the following:

• Keep more ads
• Don’t make mistakes with latency or date ranges
• Consider attributes of winning ad creative “account wide”
• Understand why some ads achieve both
• Provide information scent and relevancy
• Write clearer copy with a better call to action

If you don’t have time or technology to optimize quality score, ad copy, and landing pages, Reply.com offers Enhanced Clicks™ through our Marketplace. An Enhanced Click™ is a user-submitted, geo-targeted click. We have eliminated the complexity of managing keywords (ideal for local businesses) while increasing targeting precision. This enables local advertisers to come online without needing to become experts in SEM or hire an agency. Reply.com provides real-time redirection of consumers interested in specific category with intent to buy. Our traffic is sold in an auction on a per-click basis. We provide advertisers granular control over bids, coverage, and budgets. To find out more, please sign-up for free on Reply.com

Sep

2

Reply! Grows at Unprecedented Rate, Rips Beta Off Its Marketplace

Posted by Reply! Public Relations
Filed Under Online Marketing, Press Releases | 2 Comments 

Company Posts Annual Growth Rate of Over 50 Percent in Real Estate and Autos, Adds Key New Categories

San Ramon, CA – September 2, 2009 – Reply.com (www.reply.com), a leader in locally-targeted online marketing, announced significant growth in terms of revenue, new categories, and enhanced features and services since launching its beta Reply! Marketplace platform a year ago. In the face of a struggling economy, Reply.com has posted over 50 percent revenue growth for the six-month period ending June 30, 2009 compared to a year ago in the Automotive and Real Estate categories, and has experienced increasing profitability over the last six consecutive quarters.

Since the beta launch, the company has added key new categories including Foreclosure, Home Improvement, Used Cars, and Home and Auto Insurance. The technology is highly scalable, and its effectiveness as a platform for efficiently and profitably acquiring locally-targeted traffic has proven itself. Due to the platform’s steady and optimized performance, today the company has rolled out the full production version of the Reply.com Marketplace, lifting the “beta” label.

With a strong track record of success in performance-based marketing, Reply.com has introduced a breakthrough new model for the acquisition of locally-targeted and category-specific consumers on an Enhanced Click™ or per-lead basis that has led to significant growth. By eliminating the need for complex and expensive online marketing infrastructures and large teams of experts, Reply.com is making Internet marketing profitable and user-friendly for businesses of all sizes.

Company Founder and CEO Payam Zamani said, “Historically, lead generation has been scrappy and not as professionally implemented as CPC- and CPM-based platforms. Our Marketplace solution provides a platform that is designed to be comparable to Adwords and RightMedia, but is designed to charge on a per-lead or per-Enhanced Click™ basis, offering complete control over price, quality, and volume with a live auction for bidding,” said Zamani. “Our technology makes online marketing accessible to the $100 billion locally-targeted ad market.”

Reply.com’s Enhanced Click™:

  • Represents a consumer with interest in a particular product or service in a specific geography
  • Eliminates the complexity of managing keywords while increasing targeting precision
  • Enables local advertisers to come online without needing to hire an agency or become experts in SEM
  • Leverages HTML widgets to convert remnant content inventory into high-ROI, targeted local traffic

Reply.com’s Leads:

  • Provide lead buyers control over price, quality, and volume. Leads are sold in an auction-based, market-driven pricing format where a ratings system communicates quality
  • Enable lead sellers to maximize yield by taking advantage of Reply.com’s single platform to access one of the most complete networks of lead buyers
  • Allow publishers to launch a white-label lead generation and monetization solution

“To best serve our advertisers, we also created an advertiser-centric exchange where ad dollars can be recovered by selling off poorly-targeted traffic generated through other CPM and CPC solutions through the Reply! click and lead exchange,” said Zamani. “This helps our clients acquire what matters most to them—consumers with intent to purchase in locations where they can service them. Also, by selling excess clicks or leads into the Marketplace, they can recoup ad dollars for traffic acquired through other platforms that fall outside of their areas of coverage.”

Reply.com has been active in events and speaking engagements–including Search Engine Strategies and LeadsCon East–and was invited to join elite industry companies at the upcoming TARGUSinfo Online Lead Quality Summit in Las Vegas, September 23-24, and at the J.D. Power Automotive Internet Roundtable in Las Vegas, October 14-16.

Sep

1

Newspaper Revenues Crash 29%

Posted by Brian Bowman, CMO, Reply.com
Filed Under Online Marketing | Leave a Comment 

Newspaper Association of America posted the quarterly financial data of the U.S. newspaper industry. The report shows in Q2 ‘09, newspapers made $6.8 billion in print and online revenues vs $9.6 billion in Q2 ‘08 representing a full 29% decay in revenue.  The revenue decrease is dramatic, and it signals an increased decline for the industry. ‘09 revenue estimates are approximately $27 billion.

Key numbers:

  • Q2 2009 – Print revenues $6.16 billion, a drop of 30.15% from Q2 ‘08, and online revenue decreased 15.9% to $653 mm.
  • Q2 2008 – losses accelerate: 16% in print, 2.4% online. $8.82 billion in print and $776.5  mm online, for a total of $9.6 billion.
  • Q2 2007 – print decreases 10% and online increased 19.3% to $10.5 billion and $795 million, respectively.
  • Q2 2006 - $11.69 billion in print and $666.9 mm online  ~= 2005 numbers

Newspaper Revenue Through the Years

Newspaper Revenue Through the Years

Advertisers are increasingly looking towards advertising formats that connect them with consumers at a critical decision or purchase point.  Reply.com’s marketplace provides a platform that is comparable to Adwords and RightMedia, but is designed to charge on a per-lead or per-Enhanced Click™ basis, offering complete control over price, quality, and volume with a live auction for bidding.

Radically simplifying local online marketing, our technology makes online marketing accessible to the $100 billion locally-targeted ad market that has yet to move online in a meaningful way.  A local advertiser can sign up, create a campaign for buying leads or Enhanced Clicks™ and receive geo-targeted traffic from buyers with intent in less than 5 minutes without an ad agency or prior experience. Focusing on advertisers’ gross margins, we created the only advertiser exchange.  Online traffic acquired outside of serviceable areas can be exchanged, eliminating wasted ad spend and allowing reinvestment in profitable channels.

For large publishers, we offer them a turn-key, white label monetization platform that allows them to use local sales force to rapidly expand their addressable online market.

To learn more about why we launched a marketplace, read this.

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