In JD Power’s most recent APEAL (Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout) study, analysts were surprised to see the marked improvement, in the average domestic vehicle owners measure of delight.

The APEAL study measures owner delight with their vehicle’s design, content, layout and performance, following the first 90 days of ownership. This year, the study saw that overall delight dropped by a few points and they determined that the fuel economy index was the lone cause of that, but what was most impressive was that the eight most improved brands in the study were domestics. Buick, for example, increased its index score by 20 points and jumped eights spots on the list.

Much of the gain seen in domestic vehicles versus imports had to do with the overhaul many of the domestics went through, to make their vehicle line-up include a lot of the elements that made import vehicles so popular.

What should make the APEAL results attractive to domestic car dealers is the impact this could have on their WOM (Word of Mouth) related sales. We know that friends and family heavily influence approximately 40% of those buying vehicles, during the later phase of their decision-making process. The influence from WOM here could go as deep as to effect make and not just the model of vehicle. JD Power’s Dave Sargent (VP of Automotive Research) noted the study’s lead to WOM for manufacturers: “For vehicles that perform well on both IQS and APEAL studies, 76% of owners recommend them, versus 66% for vehicles that are below average on both.”

If all of the above is true, we may now start to see a shift in the auto industry. This would be a good thing for newspapers, niche magazine and third party sites, because even though we have seen heavy consolidation of domestic brand dealerships, their numbers far outshine the amount of brick and mortar imports dealers and as a result, they largely affect media advertising revenues, in the automotive vertical.

*Best Selling Vehicles of 2007

1. Ford F-Series, 588,952 unit sales / - 12.5%
2. Chevrolet Silverado, 526,275 unit sales / – 2.4%
3. Toyota Camry, 398,868 unit sales / + 6.4%
4. Honda Accord, 332,815 unit sales / +10.2%
5. Toyota Corolla/Matrix, 317,716 unit sales / – 4.4%
6. Honda Civic, 278,764 unit sales / +2.2%
7. Chevrolet Impala, 270, 504 unit sales / + 12.6%
8. Nissan Altima, 239,800 unit sales / +26.6%
9. Dodge Ram, 214,569 unit sales / – 29.3%
10. Honda CRV, 184,003 unit sales / +34.9%

**Forbes Magazine, 2007

written by Beverly Crandon

The Yahoo! HotJobs group announced this week that they have expanded their Smart Ads product. With the product re-vamp, employers and agencies will now be able to transform job listings into display ads, using the intuitive self service application.  All display ads made under the Smart Ad product, will then be presented to job seekers using behavioral targeting methodologies, based on Yahoo’s deep database tracking knowledge (R.E.A.L).

“For employers to remain cost effective and competitive in the evolving recruitment marketplace, they need solutions that leverage technology to efficiently connect them with the most relevant candidates,” said Jeff Kinder, senior vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs. “Like the groundbreaking R.E.A.L. search algorithm launched in February, the solutions unveiled today are more examples of Yahoo! innovation and research applied to the recruitment industry.”

In addition to the Smart Ad product expansion, Yahoo! HotJobs also released something they are calling ‘Company Profiles’. This product allows an employer to communicate and clearly represent their brand on the Yahoo network, through usage of a dedicated page that spells out the company’s culture and job openings. An integrated video module is also at an employer’s disposal.

The Yahoo! network now garners 140 million unique visitors per month.

written by Beverly Crandon

RepairPal is the most recent interactive automotive info site to appeal to consumers. The concept was founded by a group of car enthusiasts in 2007 and finally came into fruition on June 21, 2008. RepairPal is premised on the idea that consumers can sanity check their car repair quote by inputting their basic car specs and repair details. Once it has all of the information, RepairPal provides the car owner ranges and estimates applicable for their repair.

In addition to offering secondary repair quotes, RepairPal allows its users to:

• Find repair shops in their neighborhood
• Track their vehicles service records
• Get expert auto advice
• Source automotive information by auto repair heading

written by Beverly Crandon

Zillow is finally putting their newspaper consortium relationship to work, by making it possible for real estate agents to place an ad in their local newspaper and at the same time, place a ‘Featured Listing’ ad on Zillow.

Last November, Zillow partnered with 280 newspapers from the Yahoo! consortium, without really using Yahoo as a conduit. The relationship started in a similar fashion to how the newspapers work their relationship with Yahoo! Hot Jobs - distribution of their ads to an online partner. The change today further enhances this relationship by allowing the consortium to sell their advertisers featured placement spots on Zillow.

The Chronicle, the Mercury News, the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Richmond Times Dispatch will be the first of the set of newspapers to roll out the program and the plan is that in the weeks following, additional newspapers will go live.

On the flip side, newspapers will start to add Zillow features, such as ‘Zestimates’ to their own sites.

written by Beverly Crandon

Needing more qualitative data on what consumers are looking for online? Well MyBuys has released the results of their e-tailing survey, which queried 1,345 consumers about online shopping preferences and their propensity to buy. Many of the questions surrounded behavioural targeting and suggestive selling and the results, no doubt, were very interesting:

• 77% of consumers report that they have made additional purchases when they have encountered personalized product recommendations online.
• 75% of consumers are willing to provide some meaningful amount of personal information in exchange for a more personalized, relevant shopping experience.
• Personalization is only an upcoming initiative for 41% of merchants.
• More than a third of merchants say they simply lack the resources to make personalization a higher priority.

The last point above is further highlighted when profiling local merchants who do a notable amount of advertising online. Local merchants often times do not have the bandwidth or financial capital to appropriately roll out behavioural ads or suggestive selling, through recommendations formed from a consumers online shopping habits. However, media publishers have both the capital and the wherewithal to consult industry leaders and apply tried and tested applications that they can in turn broker to local merchants.

Considering some element of behavioural advertising on an ad publishing network not only provides another revenue stream, but it also enables a publisher to further connect buyers and sellers in a pointed way.

Publishers should take a page out of the rule books of many of the online shopping sites out there – ebags.com, amazon.com, apple.com and their iTunes store, all do a great job at recommending items “you may like” based on what you have recently browsed or purchased.

written by Beverly Crandon

Covering stories from blog.ad-ition.com and other relevant classified media news.

This episode’s covered news bits include coverage of three publishers and their quest to further engage new media into their properties, World Association of Newspapers and their top five list of newspaper Web sites, Rupert Murdoch’s UK closing of his News International Magazine devision and much more.

 

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written by Beverly Crandon

The World Association of Newspapers has sited Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail’s as having one of the top 5 Web site designs in the world!

WAN asked a team of five highly acclaimed designers, handpicked from different geographies, to review specific global newspapers and their Web sites. More detail on the review and the report it was published in can be found here.

In total, the prestigious top five were:

1. elpais.com (Spain)
2. guardian.co.uk (United Kingdom)
3. globeandmail.com (Canada)
4. 24sata.hr (Croatia)
5. Times Online (United Kingdom)

written by Beverly Crandon

Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group, News International, announced that it will be closing its magazine division. A company spokesperson in the UK said ”We will disengage from the magazine business. It will allow us to focus on our core business as the U.K.’s largest national news publisher.”

The magazines in question under the News International umbrella are, Love It, the Sunday Times Travel and Skymag. Love It we know will be sold and there are talks of what will become of the others.

The closing of the consumer magazine division seems to be a decision long in the making, as revenue numbers for this group have lagged for quite some time. Earlier this week, London magazine Media Week reported that News Internationals magazine division had made a loss of 9.7 million pounds, or $18.9 million, in the year to June 2007.

It is uncertain what will happen to the divisions 80 employees, of which 35 of them are editorial staff. However, this story goes to show that the structural, staffing and circulation changes are not unique to any geo.

written by Beverly Crandon

The New York Times has steeped their toe in the pool of social bookmarking and I say - good for them. NYT is calling their new social application ‘Times People’ and although still in its beta stages, what you see is enough to impress.

The Times People application is posed as a Firefox add on. Once downloaded, users are able to bookmark and share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, comments on articles, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels. Navigating through the functionality is, for the most part, user-friendly and I will excuse the systems timeout during my user sesson and attribute it to some sort of ‘maintenance’ – after all, the application is still in beta mode.

The New York Times CTO, Marc Frons, describes Times People “as an example of opening up our site as a place for our engaged community of readers to convene”.  I however, see it as opening leverage doors for the publishing giant: user data analytics galore and of course ad revenue opportunities.

In addition to this release of Times People, NYT has released/embraced other forms of new media: The New York Times Polling Project to something as simple as Link Journalism.

written by Beverly Crandon

Trulia now provides its professional users with a social media platform that allows them to market themselves with a lighter air.

Trulia is calling the social application Trulia Voices and it works as a win win for both real estate professionals and perspective homebuyers; Agents have a forum to appear as an industry expert through responding to posted queries and homebuyers have a “no pressure” forum for posing their  real estate  related questions. As an added bonus to info-seekers, Trulia totes that all questions posed on the site are answered in 20 minutes or less!

Trulia Voices represents just one of the many innovative products that this real estate listing startup has employed to set itself apart from the rest. This concept is very similar to the “Ask the Expert” functionality we encourage publishers to employ on their local market sites. Trulia has proven, again, that the concept utilitarian Q&A works, with their over 31,000 questions being asked and answered to date.

written by Beverly Crandon