According to Fortune Magazine, the hottest trend in online advertising, is in-text advertising.
Many Sites like Fox News, and MSNBC, now place links inside of stories, which look like hyperlinks to references and other sites, but these links go to advertising.
Some sites double-underline the in-text ads, to differentiate them from hyperlinks while others have a preview box for users who scroll over those words with their mouse.
Vibrant Media, one of the leading companies in the area, says they’re seeing twice as many bookings as they did this time last year, in 2007, revenues increased to $87.8 million, up from $41.6 million the year before.
Stevenson says in-text advertising offers better accountability than display ads because advertisers pick key words and then are charged per click (typically $1 to $5) so they have a better sense of the response they’re getting.
Stevenson points out that out of the two major ways of navigating the web, search and hyperlinks, only search has seriously evolved.
Fortune points out with display ad revenue dwindling, AOL’s display ads are down 25% in the 4th quater, sites may be more receptive to alternatives like in-text ads.
I think this was tried a few years ago.
It was annoying and intrusive then, and it is annoying and intrusive now.
Mike,
This can be very effective if done right. A lot of the ‘older’ techniques included heavy client-side scripts, popups, popovers etc. And the users rebelled and avoided sites using those older techniques.
Incidently, if you run your own adserver (like we do, and so do a few other domainers) then you can use your own ad server to sell and manage in-text ads both for your own sites as well as 3rd parties. i.e. if you’ve got 1000 sites, your own ad server is a perfect solution.
– Richard
This just seems borderline BlackHat to me. Nothing bad with this but its almost tricking a visitor in to clicking the links and being brought to something they didn’t want to be at. I think they are annoying when you are scrolling through an article and accidentally trip one of the boxes to open and you can not see half the article. Then when you go to close it you accidentally click the ad instead of the little x in the corner. This was something that AdSense was plagued with for a long time until they switched the click spots in the ads. Not something i want my visitors to have a burden for but if it floats the site owners boat go for it.
Been there… done that. When it was the new hot few yrs ago and cool thing… Well, payouts were crap and users didn’t like them and exited the websites when the in-text ads were all over.
Maybe this specific market will mature, but I doubt it… Google isn’t doing it. Tells you something 🙂
Mike
Since we’re on the subject, allow me to list the ad types that are the absolute WORST.
1. Any Pop-up. Pop under, or pop over. Parking companies that allow these things should be bankrupted. Thank you for pop up blockers!
2. Super-intrusive: The floating ad that scrolls across the screen and sits on top of the text you were reading.
3. The now defunct blinking ads that had a bright , pulsating lime green border screaming ‘Look at me!”
4. Any ad that when you happen to scroll over it (by accident), it becomes 4 times as large with extra information you don’t want to read.
5. A webpage full of Google adsense. I can take one or two that blend with the page design. If you have 4 Google ad blocks, it’s just too much.
Thanks for the tip.