AOL is slightly more forthcoming about the introduction of its new shopping channel, which is due this summer, according to Chris Marentis, senior vice president for interactive marketing at AOL.
Channelling
Marentis said the shopping channel would be less cluttered than in past years, with only nine to 12 categories instead of more than 20. And, he said, the site will more prominently feature AOL's Quick Buy technology, which lets users buy so-called impulse items with one click. The company keeps the customers' credit card and shipping information on file.
More significant, perhaps, is the fact that AOL will be introducing a search function using Amazon technology as part of a US$100 million deal the company made with Amazon last year. The search feature will be an important improvement for shoppers, Marentis said, because it will analyze the most popular items in any given shopping category, and list those results first. The old search engine based results on the number of times a term like "bell bottom jeans" appeared on a given Web page, rather than how many consumers actually viewed or bought those jeans.
Like executives of other portals, Marentis said the company would also do more in the future to put customers in the brick-and-mortar stores of its retail partners, rather than just focus on generating online sales. He pointed to promotions involving Volvo's S60 and the Warner Brothers movie "Cats and Dogs" last year as evidence of the company's power to spur offline sales.
Warner Brothers is owned by AOL's parent, AOL Time Warner.
But determining the fees for such campaigns can be tricky, because it is hard to calculate with any precision how much an online campaign contributes to offline sales.
Since the Internet ad slump began two years ago, marketers have increasingly struck deals in which the cost of a campaign was tied to how many visitors or customers the ads yielded.
RSS