In-Text Advertising

As we discussed in class, one of the challenges that online marketers are facing is that people paying less and less attention to the ads on websites. Researches show that people ignore banners and margins. Some of marketers' reactions include using more flash contents to drive attention. But the challenge is Ad-blockers. Some desperately placed ads right in the middle of the text as described in Joshua Wilson's blog.

While I was researching blog ideas, I came across the term "In-Text Advertising". I thought it might be better idea how we could market our products/services without being blocked or ignored.

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific words within the text of a webpage are associated with advertising content. (Wikidepia.com)

Although contextual advertising in general refers to the inclusion of advertisements adjacent to relevant online context (e.g., Google AdSense), in-text advertising places hyperlinks directly into the text of the webpage. Most in-text advertising has the following characteristics:

1. The text associated with an advertisement is identified by a double-underline to differentiate it from regular hyperlinks.
2. An in-page window containing advertising content appears when the cursor is positioned over the corresponding text. (Wikidedia.com)

This type of online advertising within the text of an article, has been around for a while. But it used to be relegated to niche sites like the videogamers' haven IGN.com and ScienceDaily.com.

Now it is appearing on some mainstream journalistic Web sites, like those of News Corp.'s Fox News, Cox Enterprises Inc.'s Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Hearst Corp.'s Popular Mechanics magazine. (Is It News...or Is It an Ad?,online.wsj.com)

Following is the list of websites,that provide the in-text advertisement.

http://www.vibrantmedia.com/
http://www.infolinks.com/
http://www.kontera.com/