Interactive Ad Storefronts
Linda Bustos recently wrote about 1-800-Flowers’s new interactive ad widgets that allow users to purchase items directly inside the ad unit without leaving the website they were currently on.
This is certainly not the first; I’ve seen other initiatives in this area where, not only do we want users to interact with the ads, but we want an actual conversion (in this case a purchase) to happen immediately with minimal barriers. But there’s not too much data / analytics on these yet to conclude how effective (ROI) these new ad initiatives are at conversions.. it’d be interesting to see some comparisons.
With that said, I think this is a great idea, and I applaud 1-800-Flowers for taking this step. Certainly more thought needs to be put into the UX side (I disagree with using AJAX to allow you to scroll .. just feels constrained).. but I agree with Linda that we could potentially see more of these, especially on the mobile front.
Demo: http://www.alvenda.com/merchants/1800Flowers/
UPDATE: I couldn’t remember earlier, but found what I was looking for. This reminds me a lot about Dapper and what they’re doing with interactive instant-conversion ads
