Initially, the “green ad” that you saw was in fact a Northern California regional Honda dealer association spot. There’s actually a larger, nationwide Honda campaign that leverages a different set of creatives featuring a telestrator theme that invites shoppers to “draw their own conclusions”. This telestrator theme is predominant throughout the various nationwide Honda campaign ad executions and landing pages and is evident for searchers who click “play video” beneath the Honda logo in the Yahoo Partner Results listings.

In addition to the large, nationwide Honda “telestrator” campaign, dealer associations (who conduct quite a bit of their own marketing) were invited to participate at their chosen levels of creative integration to leverage some value out of the nationwide effort. It’s not at all surprising that you mistook that “green ad” for a spot developed by Honda – the respective roles of the manufacturer, dealer associations and dealers in automotive marketing can be confusing to many outside of the industry and is a big topic of discussion these days. As our friend at KBB, Tim Hand, recently wrote, because of the various businesses and agencies involved and the expanding complexity of media channels, the automotive industry has a big challenge in aligning messaging strategies across tiers I, II and III. Not making excuses – just saying that your experience with the campaign would’ve been a little more consistent had you instead seen one of Honda’s nationwide ads.

Regarding your point on acknowledging the TV execution within the search ad, there’s actually some method behind this. To clarify, this campaign extended well beyond television – it included print, radio, online display and video ads and more. And the point is that there are some great, limited-time offers available right now, not that just because you saw an ad on TV you win something special. As soon as the campaign began, we tested several different copy versions within the Yahoo’s “Partner Results” area, eventually choosing the ones that generated the greatest post-click activity and CTRs. We’re all for applying best practices in messaging, but with online creative we’re often focused on ads that just quantatitively prove to be better. Similarly, we conducted a lot of landing page testing to arrive at the page content and layout that would best drive key interactions with Honda’s shopping tools. And the value exchange that you mention is right there; a slew of very good offers (which is just what many in-market shoppers seek).

There’s also a reason why there’s a different landing page when you click the main search listing link for a “Honda” search vs. a “shop Honda” search. While many people have been motivated during this campaign period to search “Honda” on Yahoo (and even Google), there’s already a huge baseline of people who search on that keyword for reasons far outside of this particular campaign. To take everybody who searches on the keyword “Honda” to a landing page that’s only focused on shopping would have been a frustrating user experience for many. But you’ll notice that the “See Offers” link in the “Honda” Partner Results search listing takes people to the telestrator-themed campaign landing page. And the Honda autos home page (which is the landing page for the main link) does have a rotating “telestrator” campaign banner (like many companies, Honda has to balance sales efforts with marketing of new products – hence the rotation).

Perhaps as Yahoo evolves this program there will be greater opportunities to customize the partner listing (creatively speaking). Maybe with continued advertiser adoption, more of Yahoo’s new “open” thinking and ongoing advertiser success it’ll grow into something bigger for them. Thanks for taking the time to comment on the campaign – and for reading such a lengthy comment back. I just happened to read your column today and thought I’d participate in a little conversational journalism!

;P nmw