Did you want a log cabin or a holiday to spain?

Travolution asked yesterday why mega-corporations find it so difficult to be innovative online. Well my simple answer is that, in my opinion, you can’t have a successful start up culture as well as a successful “innovative big business” culture…. those people with the innovative ideas tend to find their way into startups so are not there to put the “big ideas” into practice at large corporations.

Anyway, forget about innovation, many large companies struggle to just get anything new online working at all.

Lets look at The Times - a well respected, quality, media brand (UK) (and part of the News International stable of media organisations). They currently make money from travel classified advertising (along, obviously, with other income sources).

We know there is a battle going on with advertising revenue….

“Between 20 and 100 additional online users are needed because the revenue per reader for a newspaper website is far less than the equivalent figure earned by a print edition, even though online advertising is booming.

“As more and more people shift their news reading from print to online, the newspaper industry must dramatically increase its online advertising revenues or die,” said Vincent Crosbie, a senior associate at American media strategist Borrell Associates.”

[Guardian, 2006]

So what have the Times got, online, to replace existing income their offline travel classified advertising?

They have launched a new online travel classifieds directory…. OK - not innovative…. but perhaps they can execute it well.

Technically, this directory is powered by the AdTarget classified ad system from adprecision. Adprecision commercial Director Alasdair Cross said of the partnership “News International owns some of the most valuable and popular websites in the UK and we’re delighted that they have chosen our technology to power their travel search and contextual advertising” (see press release)

OK - so lets do a search for travel to London….

Well I suppose, on a global scale, Falmouth is fairly close to London….. but its not exactly a direct match. Lets try something else, perhaps the directory is better for UK people travelling abroad…. so lets search for Spain

Ah - those offers looks interesting - lets take a look

Ummm - not a great deal of detail to entice me to click through….. but perhaps I will anyway…

Oh dear….. not sure I really wanted to go to buy a luxury log cabin! (You can see the mistake - this website looks like an accommodation provider - and they have the words “spanish agent” in the top left).

Things to fix
The issue with their new solution is a data one…. how do you launch a brand new system, without advertisers, but make it sensible enough that users who find their way there may actually find something useful. Here are my top fixes:

• Rather than return bad results - return no results….. and perhaps a mention that you can advertise there.
• An alternative to returning no results - howabout backfilling with product offers from 3rd parties. There are many travel meta-search companies who would jump at the chance of being RON advertising for random travel keywords. They could supply products etc that would nicely fit in with the rest of the site.
• That generic “world map” image is awful. Even a “blank gap” is better than that.
• Get a new head of advert quality control. This directory should not be public in this state.

I still think the Travel Mail are ahead in the travel newspaper stakes!

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