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Classifieds

May 12, 2008

Online Classified Ads, Another View

"Online Classifieds Have Grown Up," writes Brad Waller, VP, business and affiliate development of ePage, in response to my column that examines why more classified ad sites haven't incorporated more interactive features.

The online classified site, he says, has been around since 1994 and that consumers are the ones who've resisted change.

"We offered audio many years ago and it never took off. We have offered video for a few years and very few users have chosen to upload any," he writes.

So why aren't more people using audio and video in classified ads?

"Audio was and still is too hard for most people. Video is a harder question. Everyone seems to have video capability on the cell phone, most digital cameras have video, and now there is the relatively cheap Flip (and other) video cameras. I really did expect video to take off because the barrier to entry is so low. My best guess on the lack of video is the demographics of the average classifieds user. Classifieds is not the realm of the 18-34 who grew up with technology. Sure, they are users, but there are a lot of older users who feel comfortable with classifieds. They are simple and easy to understand."

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 9, 2008

AdMission Sells Some Assets to Cobalt

Post written by Fred Aun.

AdMission, a developer of dynamic display ads for small and local advertisers, has sold "certain assets" to The Cobalt Group. The companies did not confirm a report that the assets in question are its Spotlight Ads division, and would only say the deal was needed to keep up with the times.

"Online advertising is an extremely exciting and rapidly evolving market and display advertising is the fastest growing segment of the category," said a statement posted to AdMission's site. "AdMission has pioneered the concept of highly effective dynamic ad formats that will shape the industry in the years to come. To fully achieve the potential of the AdMission ad platform we believe it needs to be part of a larger entity with considerable sales and marketing resources behind it."

The company re-assured its customers it will continue working with and supporting them. In fact, it said they can look forward to "a major enhancement release" of the platform in this quarter.

Cobalt provides digital marketing services to more than 10,000 companies in North America including a big chunk of the automotive industry.

"Support for the AdMission platform, partners and customer base will be retained in San Ramon, CA as a division of Cobalt," noted AdMission, adding that most of its current customer support, development, IT and integration staffers "are remaining on the team."

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March 26, 2008

The $6,560 Baby

Two classified ads spurred police into action this week.

A Salt Lake City television station reported that someone posted an online classified ad to sell or adopt a 6-month-old girl for $6,560, according to FoxNews.com. Police are investigating the ad that someone sought to publish on the TV station's Web site.

In an unrelated incident, an Oregon man reportedly lost his home's possessions after someone posted a bogus ad on Craigslist. The ad said the property's contents were free for the taking. The homeowner said that wasn't true.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 19, 2008

Matchpoint Pairs with WSJ, Local Relevance a Challenge

WSJ.com is running Matchpoint's ads in its classifieds sections, representing another financial site partner for the lead-gen ad firm. Though sites like Dow Jones-owned WSJ.com and Matchpoint partner Forbes.com are typically associated with pricier display ads from airlines or luxury goods brands, adding more direct response-oriented offerings helps them monetize non-premium site areas and appeal to new types of advertisers.

The plus for Matchpoint is more distribution for its advertiser partners, who bid on customer leads through an auction platform. Essentially, the consumer fills out a Matchpoint form asking for info like e-mail address and zip code. In this case they're WSJ-branded forms. Matchpoint vets the lead by sending the interested consumer an e-mail to ensure he wants to be contacted by the advertiser.

WSJ Careers, Real Estate and Small Business classifieds areas feature links to Matchpoint's browsable database of complementary services such as resume assistance and landscaping. The ads link to forms where users submit information such as e-mail address and zip code.
Forbes.com partnered with Matchpoint last October to run form-based display ad units on its site, allowing readers to connect with companies advertising online banking or credit card offers.

Matchpoint gives publisher partners a cut of the revenue collected from advertisers bidding on sales leads; the share depends on publisher partner size and volume of leads generated. Matchpoint touts the service as an alternative to Google AdSense, used by countless publishers in the advertising network to collect additional ad dollars.

The Forbes deal, which involves actual display ad units served throughout the site, seems a little more robust; at this point all Dow Jones is doing from what I've seen is including a link to a relevant Matchpoint search from "Partner Market Opportunities" sections in WSJ.com's jobs, real estate and small biz classifieds sections. For instance, the executive recruitment search page features a lengthy list of so-called partners, mainly standard lead gen stuff. A link to "Online Degrees" leads to EarnMyDegree.com; a "Find Small Business Software" link in the small biz resources area leads to KnowledgeStorm.com. The "Small Business Services" link in that section goes to a Matchpoint search for things like "Auto Loan" and "Furniture Systems."

So far, my experience trying out Matchpoint isn't exactly efficient. For instance, clicking from a "Career Marketplace" link on WSJ brings me to a form to input e-mail and zip code info. An e-mail comes soon thereafter, but rather than delivering me local career counseling services I can contact immediately, it provides me with a link to one company, another online lead gen service called Jobfox. When I go to that site, I have to submit even more information, including the e-mail and zip I just filled out on Matchpoint's form.

When reporting the Forbes deal last October, I tested the system, and then it also drove me down a lead gen rabbit hole. A search for "cleaners" in White Plains, NY resulted in a singular advertiser, The Done Right directory of local home improvement services. Not only did the site require an additional search by the user, its database didn't include White Plains.

The company has high hopes for building out its database with relevant local advertisers, rather than other lead gen firms, though. It's aggregating databases and now includes 11 million business listings. Also, the firm acquired GetVendors, which has a technology allowing small companies without a Web presence to contact potential clients via phone. The service basically spits out a temporary phone number that connects the merchant with the interested consumer, without divulging the consumer's actual number.

"A lot of people are starting to realize that there might be difficulties [with Web-only contact] considering these businesses are primarily phone-based," Matchpoint President Peter Adams told me, noting the phone system is "a key piece of our model as we expand into lead generation for local businesses."

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November 13, 2007

Zillow Pairs with Yahoo Newspaper Partners, but no Yahoo Involvement?

Real Estate "Zestimator" Zillow.com has announced partnerships with 11 newspaper publishers. The plans are preliminary, but the gist is newspaper classifieds sellers will upsell Zillow listings, and the papers and real estate site may share content in the future, according to Zillow Spokesperson Sarah Mann.

Nothing's implemented yet, though. Now's the time to hunker down and figure out how it will all work, she told me. The goal is to get things up and running in the first half of '08.

Remind you of Yahoo's expanding newspaper consortium? It should. Not only are all the new Zillow partners in the Yahoo group, Yahoo has featured Zillow's median home prices and property value estimates in its real estate section for over a year now.

Even the Zillow press release notes, "Many of the newspaper companies in the planned Zillow agreement are part of a newspaper consortium, which formed a year ago. The consortium began with a strategic partnership with Yahoo! for online recruitment advertising." The Yahoo partnerships deal initially involves HotJobs listings integration.

Still, Mann told me Zillow's deals with the paper companies didn't have anything to do with Yahoo, and were not a result of Yahoo fostering relationships between Zillow and the paper publishers. "This is a result of our direct communication with the newspapers….We've been talking to the newspapers since before we launched," Mann said.

The new Zillow partners are Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises, Media General, MediaNews Group, Paddock Publications, Inc., Pittsburg Tribune-Review, The E. W. Scripps Company and Times-Shamrock Communications. "More newspaper companies are expected to join the network prior to launch," according to the release.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2007

Military Advertises for Jobs on Gay Web Site

Thousands of job openings in the Army, Navy, and Air Force were mistakenly advertised this week on a Web site for gays, USA Today reported today. The Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibits gays from military service if they are open about their sexual orientation.

"We didn't knowingly advertise on that particular Web site," Maj. Michael Baptista, advertising branch chief for the Army National Guard, told the newspaper. The ads appeared on Glee.com, a Web site for gay professionals.

Jobs ranged from Army National Guard and active Army positions, as well as Navy openings for doctors and dentists. Some listings included civilian jobs, which apparently are not covered by the ban.

The military services reportedly used private ad agencies to purchase Monster's "diversity and inclusion" package, which includes Web sites for blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and gays. Most of the ads were pulled, USA Today said.

Betty Huang, director, engagement and retention, at Community Connect Inc. (CCI), said the online social networking company is an official partner of Monster Diversity. Community Connect sites, including Glee.com and BlackPlanet, receive a copy of all jobs posted to Monster Diversity, while Monster communicates with its clients, she said. "It is unknown to CCI the origin of the job postings and if a client or an agency posted the jobs," Huang said.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 24, 2007

Recruiting Sites Up the Ante

A company that matches job candidates' resumes to jobs has buffed up its own curriculum vitae.

Trovix, founded five years ago, has been offering a Web-based application that uses proprietary search technology to match and track talent.

Today, the Mountain View, CA, company expands its mission, launching a free online job service for job hunters, said CEO Jeff Benrey. Candidates can anonymously upload their resume to Trovix.com; the company promises candidates will get matches within 30 seconds based on their experience and skills. Additional listings will be e-mailed to the candidate.

Initially, the site will be open to any company that wants to post jobs. Eventually, Trovix plans to charge for advertisements listing job openings. Ads will appear as a paid result, if relevant, in response to a candidate's search. If paid results closely match a candidate's skills and experiences, it will receive a five-star designation. All search results will include a score that will indicate how well a job matches a candidate's background, according to a Trovix spokeswoman.

Results will be culled from other sources, including corporate Web sites, Monster, Career Builder, industry association boards, and free job feeds.

Trovix is not the only company working to put a new spin on job sites. Earlier this month, Rob McGovern, CareerBuilder's former chief executive launched a career site called Jobfox. While some other job sites charge businesses to advertise openings, Jobfox charges a subscription fee to companies using the service, said Jobfox spokesman Barry Lawrence.

Using Jobfox, a job seeker can create a profile by answering a questionnaire. That profile is posted on a Jobfox page and the job seeker can receive a unique URL. Jobfox matches companies and candidates based on profiles, said Lawrence. "It's an eHarmony matching system for jobs," he said, referring to the dating service.

About 1,000 profiles or resumes have been posted each day since the company's Sept. 12 launch, in addition to 500,000 collected during the company's beta, Lawrence said.

In addition to Monster and CareerBuilder, career site competitors include Indeed.com of Stamford, CT, and Simply Hired of Mountain View, CA, both of which launched in 2005 as jobs search engines.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 14, 2007

EBay Brings Gumtree to American Cities for Expatriate Classifieds

EBay's internationally-based online classified site Gumtree is extending its roots to three American cities today, supposedly as a means of giving expatriates a feel for home when searching for job, housing and other listings.

Gumtree is now offering listings in New York, Boston and Chicago with the same design and feel that British, Australian, Polish and other natives of nations served by Gumtree, would find at home. The company chose them as "These three cities in the U.S. have the highest number of expats," said Sophy Silver, a spokesperson for Gumtree.com calling from England.

The site, which was started in 2000 to give Australian and New Zealand natives living in London their own classifieds space eventually grew to be the largest listing site in the U.K., and was then purchased by eBay in 2005. In the past several years, eBay has also purchased other international classified sites, including Marktplaats.nl in The Netherlands and Spain's Loquo, and has taken a stake in the largest American free listing site, Craigslist.

Supposedly rebuffed by Craigslist when it brought up the idea of taking a larger roll in its operations, eBay recently brought its own listing site, Kijiji, to the U.S. and is now doing so again with Gumtree. Silver insisted, however, that eBay isn't looking to undermine its own classified listing investment by taking on Craigslist.

"We have a very valued stake in Craigslist and solid relationship with them, and we believe we can have multiple brands in the U.S. and they can all be successful," she told me. "We are targeting very specific communities, if we thought we were going to be cannibalizing ourselves, we would go in with one property, but we believe there's a lot of room for lots of different players."

Still, considering the humble beginnings for Gumtree, and for Craigslist for that matter, I don't think it's too far off for eBay execs to hope they can gain a foothold in the American market and then try to topple the giant later on. Even if they have an investment in them.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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