Adobe to acquire Scene7
In a press release this morning, it was announced that Adobe is acquiring Scene7. We use Scene7 for real-time color-layering on blinds and shades presented on our website and I cannot be happier about this announcement.
First, having the deep pockets of Adobe backing this technology will only mean bigger and better things for their online offering. I hope through Flash or other technology we are able to expand on the color-layering and introduce other interactive features with our products as they are featured online (i.e. showing them open and close, showing how the blinds and shades operate, etc.). Right now, the Scene7 technology is like a web-based version of Photoshop controlled via javascript functions -- you can turn layers on and off, but you are limited to that. For animation, you have to look elsewhere.
Second, I hope Adobe introduces better project management practices within the Scene7 group. One of my biggest gripes with them is their ability to manage a timeline, communicate with their customer, and execute the tasks assigned. It is for this reason that I don't currently list them under the "vendors i like" section on the right-hand side of this blog -- their technology is excellent, but working with them has been very painful to date.
We might be a rare case compared to their other clients where we don't completely hand over the entire project to them -- we are strictly using them for their technology. Other clients appear to use them as a "one stop shop" for UI and technical implementations. Regardless, I am very optimistic about this acquisition!
Trying out AuctionAds
As a result of reading the hype around AuctionAds on this post, we've added AuctionAds to the SuperMotors ad system. Our experience with programs like Commission Junction have yielded no revenue, which is surprising considering our ability to specifically target our site visitors with ads that are highly relevant to the vehicle information they are viewing on SuperMotors.
However, I'm hoping for better results with AuctionAds because we have the ability to create very targeted ads that are relevant to what our visitors are looking at on SuperMotors. For example, I created a campaign for "Ford Bronco" and am able to setup individual, targeted ads in AuctionAds for each keyword I want. So, to start off, we are have ads running that target "1978 Ford Bronco," "1979 Ford Bronco," ...all the way up to 1996 Ford Bronco.
Highly Targeted eBay Ads with AuctionAds
With the ad system we've built on SuperMotors, we can serve up ads targeted to the year, make, and model of content being viewed on the site. So, if you link to a page like this (a picture of a 1988 Ford Bronco), you'll be able to see the relevant eBay ads served up by AuctionAds for 1988 Ford Bronco items (You may need to refresh the page depending on the rotation of ads -- we're only serving up 160x600 AuctionAds at this time).
Our fingers are crossed that these highly-relevant ads translate to clicks and sales. We'll run this test for 2-3 months and slowly expand the selection of AuctionAds and year/make/model targeting we do. My favorite feature is the ability to specifically select the keywords in AuctionAds, so you know you will get relevant results based on where you're running your ads on your own site. This makes it an incredibly powerful tool for us -- provided that it produces revenue, of course. 
Blog by Eric Long
I'm an experienced online marketer, information architect, digital strategist, and social media enthusiast. I'm passionate about providing outstanding cross-channel experiences for considered purchases (with a focus on mass customization).
About Eric Long
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