I got an email the other day from Yahoo!7. It was about an awesome new ad unit that they are selling. Apparently it is super effective. They did not really elaborate on the super effective part of the email.
I am assuming they mean super effective against idiots.
it is something called “Rich Ads in Search” (RAIS) and as the subject of the email promises, they would let me “own your search terms, enhance branding and increase click through”.
When it comes to increasing brand and product awareness, small and large businesses alike need to continue to be innovative in their marketing.
Rich Ads in Search (RAIS) allows you to deeply engage your target audience through images, video and multiple direct links to your site from your RAIS ad. For the locally owned business, RAIS is also an opportunity to be listed above larger competitors in the market for specific search terms.
For $1,000, you can own your own RAIS category for up to four months that’s just $250 per month*.
This means you will be the only RAIS advertiser featured for your list of selected keywords and will be the only north listing on Yahoo!7 Search. Your ad can contain a branded image or video asset, a search box and links to up to four pages on your website. This allows consumers to search your site directly without leaving the search page and enables them to click through direct to certain content on your site.
A local car window tinting company recently ran a RAIS campaign and achieved an impressive click through rate of 18%, increasing qualified traffic to its website.
It’s simple to set up your RAIS campaign: we’ll build it for you, all you need to do is provide us with the links and assets.
I am not really a fan. To start with, it is practically a return to the 90’s, with a spot on a web site being purchased for a period of time. Yahoo! can’t seem to let go of their portal glory days.
Oh wait, I forgot, Search is a portal. In fact this bears repeating; Search Is A Portal. Don’t believe me? Look at Google an Bing, how they are cross promoting their own content and how they deal with the big verticals like travel, finance, news and general trash media topics.
Yahoo!s problem with RAIS isn’t that they are pushing a portal style ad model, it is that they are not hiding it.
But they will be gone soon anyway, as soon as Microsoft AdCentre hits Australia.
Ceratosaurus 