• by February 7, 2001

By Ken Liebeskind

Computer users spend about 30 minutes a day surfing the Web and far more time using software programs. So why is all the advertising on the Web?

That's the question a few companies asked before developing an advertising platform for software programs. Now there is a way to place advertising on software programs that plays every time someone uses them.

"It's compellingly different from Web advertising," says Robert Regular, director of sales and marketing for Conducent, a Sterling, VA firm that places advertising on over 500 software applications from 150 software companies, including Word Perfect, Pk Zip and Imesh.

"Lots of traditional advertisers, not just innovators, are using Conducent," Regular says, including Lexus, Sears, Oracle and Verizon.

Conducent calls its software advertising the Desktop Media Network because it reaches people on their desk tops instead of the Web.

Users get the software for free by agreeing to view the advertising. Software has traditionally been given away for free on a trial basis, but now "we give away an unlimited version with advertising integrated into the application," Regular says.

The software can be distributed online or bundled with other products at retail stores like Walmart, he says.

The advertising appears as interstitials whenever the software program is started and banners that appear every few minutes while the software is used. An interstitial appears again when the software is closed.

The biggest benefit of the advertising is its targeting capability. Software users provide demographic information when they install the application and the applications themselves provide advertisers with targeting data, because they are used by particular types of consumers, according to Ellen Stoloff, a spokeswoman for Cydoor. Cydoor is a New York firm that places advertising on the Opera browser, Babylon, Jet Audio and other software programs for Egghead, Amazon.com, CNET and other clients.

Bill Kopco, VP of marketing for Cybereps, a New York rep firm that sells advertising for Conducent, likens the targeting capability to opt-in e-mail and says "it's more cost effective."

Kopco says he sells Conducent on a CPM basis, although he has occasionally sold it on a CPA (cost per acquisition) basis.

Hank Dearden, president of 3D Technologies, an online marketing and media buying firm in Washington D.C., used Conducent for the Verizon shared server Web hosting campaign late last year. He used full size banner ads in a campaign that also included opt in e-mail, newsletter sponsorships and banner ads on different Web sites. He was especially happy with Conducent, which he says produced a high click through rate. "They guaranteed .5 percent, but I was getting higher," he says, two to three percent. He says the cost per click was "the lowest of all forms" of advertising in the campaign.

While the whole point of the software advertising is to free it from the Web, Dearden sees it di