• February 6, 2001

To take advantage of the tremendous marketing power inherent in the Internet, CNET Networks, Inc. has redesigned their websites and ad formats across the network. Debuting simultaneously on CNET News.com and ZDNet News websites, as well as five of CNET Networks' international sites, the new descriptive, user-initiated messaging ad units represent a creative leap-forward in offering greatly enhanced opportunities for marketers to connect and communicate with their audiences, CNET says.

To make the ad-viewing experience as clean and inviting as possible, only one advertisement will appear on each news page. Recent research conducted for CNET Networks by EyeTracking.com demonstrated that users spent more time with the new ads, liked them better, and were more likely to remember the brand than with conventional ads. In fact, for the Messaging Plus unit, brand recall was as much as 3X higher than for conventional banners.

Oracle, Broadbase, IBM, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Nextel, PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems and Visual Insights are among the initial wave of marketers taking advantage of the opportunity. In addition, online publishers such as New York Times Digital have indicated they plan to adopt the new formats.

- Anya Khait