Hoover's Explores Ad Formats And Platform To Expand Offering

Hoovers

Hoover's will unveil an advertising platform Monday to provide businesses with more opportunities to reach consumers on the site. The ad size allows the company to move from offering traditional Interactive Advertising Bureau formats to custom ad formats. The busienss site isn't moving away from offering IAB-size specific ads, but expanding into other flexible formats.

The old platform, which Hoover's Vice President of Ad Sales and Operations Mark Walters calls "inflexible," did not allow advertisers to change or customize ads easily. The new platform, built as modules, is nimble and provides a much larger inventory of ad space. The flexible technology will give advertisers the option to choose from six different IAB-size ads in the same spot.

Hoover's IT infrastructure created the biggest challenge in making the move to offer advertisers "unique sponsorship" opportunities that integrate brands into content, Walters says. "In many cases an IAB display unit doesn't facilitate the level of engagement advertisers look for on our site," he says.

So Hoover's built sponsorship and advertising opportunities into the company's financials section and company overview pages. Some might call the type of advertising takeover skins that blanket specific information boxes on the site.

Site visitors revisit often. Hoover's site gets approximately 11 to 12 page views per session. Pricing for advertisements on the site remains the same as 2009, in the mid $20s per CPM, Walters says.

The section on Hoover's dedicated to company financials tends to attract a lot of traffic. Technology now allows Hoover's to customize that section for the variety of visitors that come to the site. For example, an ad on the page may read "before investing in Apple talk with Chuck." Hoover's customers will migrate to the site slowly. Some started working on the platform last month.

The message can change as the person visiting the site loads a variety of information, Walters says. Those who click on a level of information deeper in the site and the visitors could see an IAB ad format as well.

Hoover's spent the better part of 2009 working on updating back-office IT systems, improving data and workflow integration, and developing applications. The tools will assist businesses rapidly adopt emerging technologies and social media.

The company also improved tools for site visitors to improve functions and navigation. The custom sales alerts and event, for example, triggers real-time, event-driven information about prospective and existing customers sourced from news feeds and company Web sites. The alerts are delivered through email or CRM system.

There are downloadable financial charts and graphs, notes and tag features that provide CRM functions, and a tool that provides a "family tree" to identify the scope of a company, such as subsidiaries and business units.

Monday's announcement underscores Hoover's commitment to staying ahead of its advertisers' and site visitors' needs for sales and marketing solutions that help them grow their businesses. The new platform delivers additional workflow tools to facilitate the sales cycle, expand insight for more targeted high-yield prospecting, and more ways to connect with decision makers.

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