Home Business Tech Markets Entrepreneurs Leadership Personal Finance ForbesLife Lists Opinions Blogs E-mail Newsletters People Tracker Portfolio Tracker Special Reports Video & Audio Commerce Energy Health Care Logistics Manufacturing Services Technology Washington CIO Network Digital Entertainment Enterprise Tech Infoimaging Intelligent Infrastructure Personal Tech Sciences & Medicine Bonds Commodities Currencies Economy Emerging Markets Equities Finance Human Resources Law & Taxation Sales & Marketing Management Technology Careers Compensation Corporate Citizenship Corporate Governance Managing Philanthropy CEO Network Reference Estate Planning Funds Investment Newsletters Retirement Strategies Taxes Collecting Health Real Estate Sport Travel Vehicles Wine & Food 100 Top Celebrities 400 Richest Americans Largest Private Cos World's Richest People All Forbes Lists Business Opinions Investing Technology Opinions Washington & The World Companies People Reference Technology Companies Events People Reference
  


Is eTour worth the trip?
Penelope Patsuris, 10.15.99, 12:00 AM ET

Why are heavy hitters like eBay ebay (nasdaq: ebay - news - people), Amazon amzn (nasdaq: amzn - news - people) and Disney dis (nyse: dis - news - people) advertising on a site you've never heard of? One that not only has a small membership but uses a totally untested web marketing format? Because the site, eTour, may know something others don't: how to deliver visitors directly to advertiser home pages without the use of intermediaries like banner ads or links.

The idea behind eTour is that every time a user opens a browser, they are taken to a new site and don't have to slog through search engine results. Users register for free by filling out a questionnaire that details their interests. When the user logs on, eTour takes him to sites that correlate with that survey.

"It seemed like a no-brainer to sign on," says Gil Penchina, eBay's senior manager of business development. "Bringing people to our home page is a far better branding experience than a tiny banner ad. And eTour lets us identify unique visitors. Buying a banner you have no control whether ten different people see your ad once, or one person sees it ten times. Banners guarantee impressions only; eTour can guarantee individuals."

When eTour founder Roger Barnette came up with the concept it wasn't as an aspiring marketer, but as a frustrated web surfer. "The first time I got on the web it was a big letdown," he recalls. "I'd heard the Internet had such great stuff, but there I was on Netscape's home page with no idea how to find what was out there."

"It seemed like a no-brainer to sign on. Banner ads guarantee impressions only; eTour can guarantee individuals."

Barnette likes to describe his service as a remote control for the Internet that's programmed for individual tastes. Users can either make eTour their start page and be delivered to a new site every time they open their browser or bookmark the site and surf when the mood hits. Wherever they land, there's an eTour navigation bar on the bottom of the page with a "next site" button they can use to keep surfing.

Revenue comes from advertising sites like eBay that pay for priority in eTour's rotation. This means the success of eTour will depend largely on its ability to garner the kind of critical mass any marketing vehicle needs to attract advertisers. That means establishing a consumer brand, which is what everyone on the web is vying for.

To this end, perhaps the most notable asset eTour has is WebMD CEO Jeff Arnold on its board. "He's what pushed me over the edge to invest in eTour," says Robert Guyton, who participated in eTour's $10 million first round of financing via his Atlanta-based Monarch Partners venture fund and was also one of Inktomi's three founders. "To work, eTour needs a land grab from a branding perspective, and that's what WebMD just did. [The medical site] demonstrated that if you're a first-mover and you declare victory, the market will reward you."

But in a world of $100 million ad campaigns for Internet sites, $10 million isn't a lot, so eTour is drumming up distribution partnerships in which no money changes hands. The site recently launched a co-branded service with the popular direct marketing and community site Xoom.com xmcm (nasdaq: xmcm - news - people). "We'll have more distribution partner announcements before the end of the year," says Barnette.

continued from "Is eTour worth the trip?"



eTour's database of between 10,000 and 15,000 web sites is selected by an editorial staff whose mandate is to sort for quality and relevance. If it's dinnertime, the program will serve up cooking site; if you've got a New York IP address, you're liable to land on Yankees.com. "If you like golf and it's Ryder Cup week, you'll see that site," says eTour co-founder and vice president of marketing Jim Lanzone. "But after that week the Ryder Cup site is gone."

Barnette says eTour can help newbies learn their way around and experienced surfers continue to expand their horizons. "After you've been online for a while," says eBay's Penchina, "you develop patterns, [like] going to the same six sites all the time." Barnette says he doesn't intend to replace portals, just to give users new sites to consider.

With no marketing whatsoever, eTour has acquired 420,000 members, with about 3,000 more registering each day. That's nothing compared with numbers from the big dogs like Lycos, but eTour nevertheless stands out in terms of other stats. According to Media Metrix, eTour ranks second out of all web sites in the average number of days used for the month of August: 9.2. RocketMail is the only site that does better. eBay visitors averaged 5.5 days in August, while Amazon's averaged 1.8 days.

According to the Reston, Va.-based research firm PC Data, eTour is also exceptional in terms of stickiness, or keeping visitors around, with average users spending about an hour and a half on the site monthly. "There are only four other portals which do above an hour," says PC Data's Cameron Meierhoefer, "Yahoo! yhoo (nasdaq: yhoo - news - people), MSN, Excite athm (nasdaq: athm - news - people) and Netscape.com."

eTour ranks second out of all web sites in the average number of days used for the month of August and is exceptional in terms of stickiness, with average users spending about an hour and a half on the site monthly.

eTour's business model revolves around getting sites to pay for what eTour is careful to describe as prioritization. "They don't pay for entry into our database or for the frequency with which they're presented," says Lanzone. "Because we won't show a user any one site more than once every 28 days. At the end of the day it's in our best interest to keep the consumers happy."

Currently about 10% of the sites in eTour's database are paying customers, the goal being to take that level to about 40%. "There are a lot of great sites that will never pay us but that should still be a part of our service," says Barnette.

eTour charges advertisers about 50 cents for every unique visitor that comes to a site, which compares favorably to the cost of banner ads. Advertisers generally pay $10 to $20 per thousand impressions (CPM), with click-through rates hovering at less than 1%. In a generous calculation, that comes to about $1 per visitor. "eTour is definitely a better deal than paying a $20 CPM and getting a 0.6% click-through," says Forrester Communications analyst Jim Nail. "But you can also go to networks like Flycast fcst (nasdaq: fcst - news - people) and Valueclick and pay 50 cents on per-click deals."

At least an ad network's dumb banner ads on a site's periphery can be easily ignored. Of course that's the problem eTour advertisers are trying to address. Unlike easily overlooked banner ads, eTour gets in a users face with entire web pages of content that may be good, bad or indifferent. But are Netizens willing to spend the time seperating the wheat from the chaff in the hope of finding something new and interesting? If they are, paying advertisers will no doubt follow.

Monday's Forbes Digital Tool feature: "Dot-com brand-building runs wild"



1 of 1


Article Controls



Related Sections
Home > News & Analysis



News Headlines | More From Forbes.com | Special Reports
   
Subscriptions >

Free Trial Issue of Forbes Forbes Gift Subscription
Subscribe To Newsletters Subscriber Customer Service
Buy Audio Version of Forbes




  
Trading Center
Brought to you by the sponsors below
 
 

CEO Book Club more >
The Philosopher Kings Of Hedging
The Philosopher Kings Of Hedging
Steven Drobny reveals insights from the hedge fund all-stars.
READ REVIEW          BUY THIS BOOK
Laissez Faire In The Studio
Dunstan Prial
At Columbia Records, John Hammond made some of the greatest discoveries in American music.
READ REVIEW          BUY THIS BOOK
Search Books


Advanced Search |  New & Notable

 
  
 
    


 
SitemapHelpContact UsInvestment NewslettersForbes ConferencesForbes MagazinesForbes Autos
Ad Information   Forbes.com Wireless   RSS   Reprints/Permissions   Subscriber Services  
© 2006 Forbes.com Inc.™   All Rights Reserved   Privacy Statement   Terms, Conditions and Notices


Stock quotes are delayed at least 15 minutes for Nasdaq, at least 20 minutes for NYSE/AMEX. U.S. indexes are delayed at least 15 minutes with the exception of Nasdaq, Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 which are 2 minutes delayed.


Powered By