Commentary
Waiting 'til the Last Minute
- by Seana Mulcahy , March 1, 2004
Nielsen//NetRatings saw an increase in tax sites mid-January, as employers returned W-2 forms. During the week ending Jan. 18, the five fastest growing tax sites combined drew more than 2.8 million unique visitors.
Other findings include:
Hrblock.com surged 221 percent week-over-week, taxACT.com jumped 45 percent, Turbotax.com increased 44 percent, and Quicken.com grew 37 percent, followed by IRS.gov.
Certainly, not all people are organized. E-Commerce Times tallied up last year's results. To no surprise, many Americans flocked to tax sites on Apr. 15th. What was surprising was how prepared such sites were. There were no real catastrophes with site crashes and slow load times. According to Gomez, in fact, average response time during the pre-deadline period was 2.86 seconds, and sites were available 99.8 percent of the time.
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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) clocked the biggest gain, with a 25 percent increase in traffic and yielded 2 million returns online. TurboTax.com ranked second with a 20 percent increase, drawing 6.8 million visitors. HRBlock.com attracted about 3 million people, and TaxAct.com drew 2 million. TaxCut.com, which is also owned by H&R Block, had 1.7 million visitors in February.
So what's the appeal of these sites?
No matter what the demographic is, all Americans are affected by personal income taxes this time of year. Of course financial service companies and sites tweak content and advertising to be contextually relevant. However, it shocks me that few brand advertisers don't hop on the bandwagon.
In the ad biz we have a saying called Vampire Creativity. Its when you remember an ad being so great but you can't remember the brand. Well, I'm having a case of that as I write to you this morning. A few years back there was a headache medicine that did a great tax sponsorship. They were all over news and financial sites offering free samples to ease the pain of the tax season. It was brilliant but errr... I forgot who did it.
Humor me for a moment would you? I could brainstorm all day about this. I'm certainly not a copywriter but... How 'bout a pizza company... free delivery... because we know you are running out of time... Or an oil change ad - afterall it takes less time than your taxes. The travel industry would fare well... there's no escaping yet... but after April 15th you are home free... or what you can do with your refund.
Come on sales reps, it's not too late to offer a fire sale to one of these advertisers. And advertisers, has your agency considered other parameters for online advertising tracking and reporting at that time? My guess is they probably haven't. I don't care what the brand,if you are advertising online, you need to be made aware of what's driving the most traffic while your campaign is running. Maybe you'll see a drop in traffic. Maybe you won't have as many impression in your paid placement search efforts. Maybe you'll even see an increase. I encourage you to push them to think about your brand and your business out of a vacuum for a minute.
If you have a cool campaign tied to this season, drop me a note on the SPIN board. Better yet, let me hear your ideas. Also, someone please write in and tell me who that ad was for so I can give proper credit.
Oh and yes, I wait 'til the last minute.
