Flexible Headlines

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jake Robinson on October 7, 2009 at 11:43pm

big magazines, like Newsweek, Time etc have regional editions catering to the slight cultural quirks... so i agree with you on 'culture of readership'...

on news stories, i can't see how you get in front of the time factor... 'new' news is coming out and drives 'old' news out of the way... but for press releases & lifestyle human interest type articles I could see an optimizing feature...

If you use multivariant testing which is a 'grid method' that can test up to 300 different page variables at one go... (this exists) varying everthing from font size, color, images, placement, headlines etc which has been able to increase clickthrough from 300% to 1200%! Now, if you could corral in say, 5 to 10 major sites that push out content and contract to multivariant test certain pages (because they have enough traffice to warrant MVT) to test headlines - you could quickly get the aggregate optimum headline for a Press Release, or human interest story - then client pays for the optimized headline and site get tiny revenue sharing...

or maybe we change the whole model... if you can multivariant test PR releases in a limited release to your 'test bed' sites - you optimize the whole thing.. what can you charge for a company to increase their click through 500% (against original article benchmarked)

Instead of SEO through a search engine using 'tactics' you are using high-speed aggregated human optimization in real time 'streaming' MVT... bet there would be some big co's that would pay for that service...

or you position yourself as an 'ad agency' that kicks all your competition's asses... what say you?

PS - i know one of the worlds few people (i only have heard of three) that are experts on MultiVariant Testing - and he lives about 3 miles from me ;>)



Kate O' said:

Hey, how did I miss a great discussion on A/B testing and targeting? Wow. :)

Like Summar and Davis have said, this is a great idea but there are tools that are doing really similar things, and the timeline of a headline's effectiveness makes this challenging.

On the other hand, this is a whole lot like testing subject lines in email. The point of that testing isn't just to optimize the email being tested; it's to inform the process in an ongoing way so that the following emails can start out from a more optimized point.

In other words, maybe what this is is more of a methodology that can be built into content authoring tools, like MarsEdit and other blogging apps. Maybe one starts with a hypothesis that a particular headline variant will appeal to a certain subset of the audience while another headline variant might appeal to another subset, and one then sets up a whole bunch of segments to test for. Once you have results that suggest that, say, the snarky headline worked well with audiences who were referred from Slashdot, but the "just the facts"-style headline worked best with audiences coming from Google, you can probably optimize future content distribution for best chance of clickthrough.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kate O' on October 8, 2009 at 5:45am

Hey Jake, I'm very familiar with MVT (it's part of what my business offers as a service) and I'll say for Michael that I know he is, as well, and yes, that's what we were both referring to in our comments. The tool Michael was mentioning, Omniture Test&Target, has a component they used to call 1:1 which is the rebranding of their acquisition of TouchClarity, and 1:1/TouchClarity offers the ability to optimize ads and creative across high-view pages such as those on media sites. I was on the Test&Target Customer Advisory Board twice in the past few years and have heard some really cool uses of 1:1, but one thing to note is that it is a black box process once the creative is in place and the campaign is running: for better or worse, there's no human tweaking happening during optimization, as it sounds like you might be proposing. I don't know if the human tweaking is a valuable differentiator or not; I'm just trying to fill in some detail in the competitive landscape. :)

For what it's worth, here's how Omniture describes these features on the Test&Target section of their site:

Automated Predictive Learning
* Each visitor and click is scored individually, so targeted offers can be served based on a visitor’s unique interests
* Create extensible customer profiles that include offline data, such as product holdings, credit score, time on file and other non-personally identifiable information
* Import external customer profiles in real time for heightened relevance

Automated Campaign Management

* Automatically direct site traffic in response to visitor behavior, factoring in variables such as time of day, email communications or product promotions
* Self-optimizing campaigns ensure that the most effective targeting scenarios are shown more often, accounting for environmental or seasonal changes
* Automatically promote the best performing scenarios to improve conversions for specific audience segments or across the site

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jake Robinson on October 9, 2009 at 12:54am

It sounds very similar.. i wasn't suggesting a human element other than this fellow has his software that does a similar task... he is a genius (my opinion) when it comes to variable testing... his testing may be less behavioral from external influence (product promotions, etc) and more infrastructure evaluation... out of 1,000 unique visitors the higest click through based on 'button color' was dark green with 23% effective clickthrough,,, another element is the image that had a man & woman vs just a man or woman garnered more clickthroughs.. so, maybe this is what you are speaking of or maybe they are similar but distinct enough for both to be considered?

Kate O' said:

Hey Jake, I'm very familiar with MVT (it's part of what my business offers as a service) and I'll say for Michael that I know he is, as well, and yes, that's what we were both referring to in our comments. The tool Michael was mentioning, Omniture Test&Target, has a component they used to call 1:1 which is the rebranding of their acquisition of TouchClarity, and 1:1/TouchClarity offers the ability to optimize ads and creative across high-view pages such as those on media sites. I was on the Test&Target Customer Advisory Board twice in the past few years and have heard some really cool uses of 1:1, but one thing to note is that it is a black box process once the creative is in place and the campaign is running: for better or worse, there's no human tweaking happening during optimization, as it sounds like you might be proposing. I don't know if the human tweaking is a valuable differentiator or not; I'm just trying to fill in some detail in the competitive landscape. :)

For what it's worth, here's how Omniture describes these features on the Test&Target section of their site:

Automated Predictive Learning
* Each visitor and click is scored individually, so targeted offers can be served based on a visitor’s unique interests
* Create extensible customer profiles that include offline data, such as product holdings, credit score, time on file and other non-personally identifiable information
* Import external customer profiles in real time for heightened relevance

Automated Campaign Management

* Automatically direct site traffic in response to visitor behavior, factoring in variables such as time of day, email communications or product promotions
* Self-optimizing campaigns ensure that the most effective targeting scenarios are shown more often, accounting for environmental or seasonal changes
* Automatically promote the best performing scenarios to improve conversions for specific audience segments or across the site

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Tom Cheredar on October 9, 2009 at 1:03pm

News is most valuable when it's new and scarce. That being said, "timeliness" is definitely an issue for anything that would be valuable to a true news organization on the web and I don't think a flexible headline tool could work fast enough for it to really matter. I could see an idea like this working for feature stories or investigative/comprehensive guides, but as stated above, larger organizations (with far more resources) are developing similar tools.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page