Check out this great post from Sean at Double Positive on the evolution of advertising online - Sean discusses the evolution from CPM to CPC to CPA in this post. I am sure his next post will speak of Cost per Transfer - as this is the basis of Double Positive's business model and an emerging trend in outbound consultative sales.
One interesting theme Sean discusses is the rapid growth of lead aggregators like Lending Tree and Advertising.com - he writes, "Lead aggregators essentially disintermediated the advertisers’ brand from the user UNTIL the lead was sold to the advertiser." I would ask: Did these aggregators also reduce the ability of online advertisers to craft a unique brand identity?
In online education, some companies give these lead aggregators 75%+ of their overall media spend. If you look at the landing pages for several different schools, they have no differentiation in messaging. Check out this Classes USA landing page for Kaplan - it has a stock photo in the upper left corner that could be used for any other school and the first paragraph reads: "If you want to begin a career in accounting,
the Associate of Applied Science in Business Administration/Accounting
will give you the credentials you need to achieve your professional
goals."
If I go to 10 other schools, their Classes USA landing pages sound essentially the same. So a customer's first interaction with the Kaplan brand gives that customer no differentiation and no reason to choose Kaplan. Not an ideal state of affairs for Kaplan and other education companies. I think what you will start to see is Kaplan and others asserting more control over lead aggregators and more tightly controlling the image and messaging potentially customers see when they hit those landing pages.
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