Today, we’re announcing an expansion of our partnership with Topix, the Web’s leading destination for local news content and discussion (Topix is backed by Gannett, The McClatchy Company and Tribune Company). We just deployed some new technology we developed for Topix—we’re calling it an ‘e-circular’—that provides a real-time feed of product offers from local retailers situated in the same ZIP as news and user-generated content displayed on the thousands of Topix local news pages.
Just as with all our product search feeds, the content that powers the e-circular is dynamically generated and focused exclusively on in-stock product from our retail partners (typically, national storefronts). The e-circular automatically presents readers with local ‘best deals’ from these retailers, and complements the local news and user discussion content for any city with a real-time display of local, in-stock best buys.
Using the new e-circular, Topix is able to present readers who are focused on news and news-related discussions for a specific locale with ‘fresh’ offers from local retailers —without any need for editorial input. This enables Topix to maintain a high degree of local content by ensuring a high local ‘relevance’ of the news AND products/retailers featured on any page — and relevance drives interest.
You can see the e-circular working on a Dallas news/forum page action here (see “Today’s Best Deals”)
Earlier this year, we deployed a ‘local deals’ content widget with Topix. We carefully monitored reader behavior and found that readers of content on pages with the Krillion module have a high propensity to click on the results — orders of magnitude higher than click-through rates for other ads on these pages. We suspect that this is because readers tend to view these modules more as content than ads, so in this attest phase of the deployment, we’re making them more even more interactive and informative, using a ‘carousel’ approach to showcase the local deals pulled from our vast index of storefronts and in-stock products.
The new Krillion e-circular is a new form of online advertising — and it's everything that traditional circulars (and Web variants of circulars, offered by other companies) are not:
– Generated on the fly to match specific ZIP codes
– Plug-and-play compatibility with multiple retailers
– Features multiple products, configurable by the retailer
– Rich & dynamic
This is another example of how Krillion is becoming integral to the fabric of the Web, connecting locally focused Web users with local, in-stock product. The structure and organization of our data enables us to package it however our publishing partners can use it. Which means they, in turn, can make local product availability a relevant and accessible element of their websites — and more effectively monetize their Web content. Look out for more partnerships of this type from us.
What does this mean for our network partners?
Consumer-product manufacturers that work with Krillion will benefit greatly from the e-circular through additional national exposure for their products in these new e-circular modules and the overall expansion of the Krillion network in terms of pages that will now display Krillion’s local product search results. A bonus is that your authorized retailers will see more highly qualified sales leads.
Our retailer partners will benefit in much the same way — as we integrate more retailers into the Krillion e-circular module, they will see more website hits and foot traffic in the stores whose in-stock product is featured alongside local news and user-generated content on Topix.com.
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