Interstitial Ad-the Ambush

Penned down lines would find its usefulness for those, who's wanting to know what an Interstitial ad is.

Interstitial ad, is one of the most popular Rich Media ad type.Also, commonly known as Metastitial ads or transition ads.Interstitial ads are those, which would appear when an user navigates from one page to another page.There are some interstitials that would appear, when an user closes the web browser session.Technically, all these interstitial ads gets downloaded to the user's cookie, when an user visits a web page, which has an interstitial ad scheduled.And so, the downloaded interstitial ad would begin to monitor the user's behavior and when it finds that the user navigates to someother page or closes the browser, instantaneously the ad gets triggered and appears to the user.Depending on how the interstitial are programmed by the creative team, the interstitial appears either while navigating between pages or closing the browser.

Below is an example for an interstitial POPUp ad

In general, an interstitial ad type would be deployed for branding campaigns.Many people normally gets confused between an interstitial and superstitial ads.Actually, the nature of how these ad loads in both the ad types are the same, the only difference is being, a Superstitial ad appears on the background.One more thing on interstitial ad, I am not sure though is, some interstitials works on web browsers which has "Java Virtual machine" installed, a software addon for the web browser.

Traffickers !!!

Points to be noted While Trafficking Interstitial ads

Traffickers, normally interstitial ads would be of Tag form and you would need to make special settings on your ad server to traffic intersititals unlike normal ads.Moreover, you may need to make additional modification the interstitial creative tag before uploading on the Ad server so as to ensure impressions and click recordings.I would highly recommend the Traffickers to check with your Ad sever manual to know how to traffick interstitial ads.

Relevancy of Online advertising, a disaster?

In our industry, throwing up advert much relevant to the content and to the Targeted Audience is the prominent factors which determines a good advert.But sometimes, it might leads to disaster.One such case which, I came across today when, I happened to check my email on my 30gigs account.When I opened up the 'Inbox", I saw a leaderboard(728x90) Google Adsense advert on the Top, campaigning to create a gmail account.

Refer to the screenshot below

So whose loss, whose gain?

• Can we blame GoogleAdsense for showing this advert?
• Should we blame the 30gigs team for placing google adsense on their inbox ?

We cannot blame either of them as, GoogleAdsense does not know the 728x90 property details on 30gigs.At the same time even 30gigs does not know what are the Scheduled ads that would be displayed.So sometimes things are inevitable.

So whats the lesson in the store?

Too much of Relevancy not only gets you conversions, but also eats your cake :-)

Yahoo moved the Coin Again !

I came across an article in MarketingVox, which read

Yahoo has acquired ad targeting and delivery firm Blue Lithium for US$ 300 million, reports Advertising Age.The purchase is the latest in moves by major players to coin the behavioral advertising market.Blue Lithium adds a significant number of capabilities and inventory to Yahoo's existing ad offering.

The newly-acquired company boasts relationships with major publishers, which will continue after the purchase. Its inventory will be incorporated into Right Media Exchange, which Yahoo just acquired in full a few months ago.

Blue Lithium will run ads on Yahoo's network of fully-owned sites and services, bringing significant targeting power to ad delivery, something Yahoo aggressively began to target with the introduction of its SmartAds(Read my earlier post on smart ads) offering to the market.

Yahoo hopes adding a performance-based system will bolster the income from marketers looking for more than just brand impressions, characterized as a strength for the company.

Source MarketingVox

Fifth Network's Innovative Targeting

Quite a lot of innovations happening in our industry.Much recently an ad network, called Fifth Network has introduced a new baby to the existing family of Targeting.Fifth Network calls this as, an "Attention Targeting".

The idea of this targeting is, nothing but to target ads on pages, where users stays for a longer time.Bill casper, president and CEO, said that, this method has enabled them to offer an e-CPM whose rate is much lower than that of a Premium inventory. Adding to this Mr.casper has told that, this Targeting method is purely a branding product.Usually Multimedia and News related websites are the ones, where users tends to spend more time.So the company, would identify such websites in their network and further filter down to the Page/Zone level to target.

To address few concerns like,
what if an user opens up a website and goes away?
I firmly believe that, not everyone would open a website and goes away.However, the Fifth network has addressed this Q as well.Say, If a particular ad's impressions goes more than 2 and a half minute, it would not be considered.

Also, the Fifth network has planned to associate with Dynamic Logic (Industry leader in online surveys) and InsightExpress to measure the effectiveness of this targeting once the campaign is live.