seloger integration

Interesting article on the integration of Adslot for SeLoger in France. It seems a little promotional but still has some good information.

http://www.propertyportalwatch.com/2011/10/seloger-adslots-case-study/

SeLoger – AdSlot Case Study
by Gordana Davila on 18 October, 2011
in Analysis, Features, News

With many property portals looking to increase their revenue from sources such as display advertising, we thought we would look more closely at Seloger’s choice in engaging AdSlot to implement its self-serve ad platform.

In the past, offline media – such as print and outdoor advertising – have taken the majority of an agent’s brand based marketing spend, since most of the search and listing market has moved online, a significant commercial opportunity to increase SeLoger’s market share of local brand based marketing was presented to the company, and the objective was to become the top destination for agents to build their brands using online display advertising.

Upon examining the market, SeLoger recognised there were opportunities to increase their already established suite of services to real estate agents; the decision was made to venture in online display advertising.

SeLoger’s marketing department initially sold the advertising to agents, but by doing so, a large number of resources were being utilised to serve a somewhat small percentage of the total customer base, which paved the path for the company to create a self-serve accessibility to the site, for estate agents to create their own display ads.

Revenue contribution could be achieved through a low cost, self-serve display ad sales channel, from existing advertisers through to the long tail of SeLoger’s agent customer base.

Removal of traditional display ad channel overheads automatically, would allow estate agents to significantly increase their high margin display advertising revenue, and ensuring affordability.

The goal by SeLoger was also to enable its agents to access with ease the power of online ad formats which were in rich media. Attractive and engaging ads had the reputation of being able to provide agents with a solid alternative to print media, and represent a strong opportunity to increase the revenue contribution from display advertising to SeLoger’s bottom line; banks and airlines had used self-serve platforms to service their customers, for a fraction of the cost via the internet for many years.

The platform needed to be user-friendly for it to work and be embraced by agents. Easy navigation, speed and security were essential elements which were taken in consideration, as well as the fact that the solution needed to be easily integrated with SeLoger’s legacy systems with minimum impact on the company’s core development team.

After evaluating a number of providers to their list of key requirements, SeLoger found that Adslot could deliver a fully integrated end-to-end display ad platform; providing proven experience at successfully integrating display advertising automation technology into other tier one real estate portals around the globe.

The Adslot platform makes it possible for real estate agents (in France) to login via SeLoger’s legacy agent admin system, find a location, book a suburb sponsorship, and pay online, by credit card.

Once a sponsorship is secured, the agent then uses an ad builder to create a high quality flash ad from a range of templates made available to them. SeLoger gives final approval to the online creative before it’s automatically delivered to the SeLoger site by the Adslot cloud based ad server.

Agents are able to access real-time performance reports during the campaign, and they can change their creative to improve their campaign results.

There are several key elements to the Adslot platform for SeLoger .

Automated sales process

SeLoger’s business case stressed the imperative for every stage of the sales process to be fully automated, since manual processing at any stage would create a bottleneck and avoid the scalability needed to effectively service agents with who have a limited monthly budget.

The Adslot publisher platform combines a number of proprietary technology elements, including:

• Self-serve buying interface
• Inventory management with dynamic price optimisation
• Rich media ad builder
• Online credit card facility and
• An automated ad server module

Empowering the agent

The self-serve interface provides the agent, real-time reporting on the performance of each piece of creative, making it possible to modify creative and maximise the value of their campaign. The amount of times an agent can modify their creative is limitless, as there are no additional costs incurred to produce each new ad, but most importantly, the agent interface is simple and easy to use.

Seamless integration

Adslot executed integration with SeLoger’s legacy ad technology and admin infrastructure, without any disruptions to SeLoger’s business and virtually no involvement from SeLoger’s internal development team.

Adslot’s integration also allowed a continuity of experience for agents, by maintaining a single sign-on through the existing SeLoger Pro agent admin channel and integration with SeLoger’s CRM – Salesforce.

Billing and contract data is automatically updated through real-time integration with Sage and Ogone, SeLoger’s existing online credit card facility. Finally, the Adslot cloud based ad server delivers the display inventory directly to the SeLoger website.

Tight control over pricing and other business rules is crucial to maintaining and growing yield as SeLoger sell their premium display advertising inventory through Adslot.

The Adslot platform gives SeLoger broad controls over key content and revenue elements, including:

• Selection of inventory for sale
• Agent access to the platform
• Pricing
• Discounting (campaign based and agent specific)
• Approval of creative prior to ad serving

The future of pricing display

SeLoger’s first phase deployment of the Adslot platform uses the SeLoger’s fixed rate card, and as the market develops, the new platform increases and SeLoger has the power to create dynamic pricing strategies to further improve their yield and sell through rate.

Adslot’s pricing engine can perform complex algorithms which can factor in latent demand, value of the listings, selling time and the audience size to determine the appropriate price. Adslot will continue to work with SeLoger on improving their yield and sell through rate by progressively moving from a fixed rate card, to dynamic pricing and ultimately, Adslot’s powerful auction based pricing engine.

Once pricing rules are set, the Adslot platform makes decisions in real-time to dynamically maximise yield on every single transaction, and it all happens automatically inside the platform.

Maximising the market for display ad sales
SeLoger is the global pioneer among real estate portals, providing agents with universal access to affordable rich media display advertising. By making it easy for any agent in France to purchase and create ads without having to use an ad agency.

Existing advertisers are able to allocate their creative development funds to purchase more display ads, and new advertisers can afford to run a branding campaign regardless of the size of their budget.

Increasing the number of agents who are buying high margin display advertising will directly impact SeLoger’s bottom line.

Administration overheads having been reduced, allows SeLoger’s sales team to freely focus on pitching the benefits of brand advertising and thus increasing their sales productivity.