• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 21, 2009

 

Adify Monday unveiled new expandable ad formats that will allow advertisers to run more eye-catching campaigns across its vertical ad network.

 

The six new ad units include a push-down unit, a floating ad, a sliding billboard and an ad that appears when a corner of the Web page peels back. The larger, flashier formats are intended to let marketers run roadblocks and other high-profile placements on Adify's 200 niche networks, as they can on major sites like Yahoo or NYTimes.com.

"If you're doing a promotion or product launch, you can't afford to put your best creative on only a few sites," said Joelle Kaufman, Adify's vice president of marketing. You want to extend your campaign across a network of quality sites where your audience is." In short, the ability to run premium display units on Adify's 12,000 mid-tail and long-tail sites.

The bigger-is-better approach to display advertising online gained momentum earlier this year when the Online Publishers Association introduced three large, non-IAB standard ad units for its members including CNN.com, MSNBC.com and Forbes.com. The idea is that the more intrusive, interactive formats will make it harder for consumers to bypass them as they do typical banner ads.

Based on testing of the new Adify ad units in the last two months in campaigns for brands including YMI jeans and Febreze Kaufman said results have been impressive. Click-through rates have been as high as 1% to 5%, compared to .1 or .2% for standard banner ads. Brand lift has been in the range of 10% to 25%. "Recall goes up with much more interactive units," she noted.

At the same time, Adify aims to strike a balance on intrusiveness by allowing publishers in its network to cap the frequency ads or opt out of using the expandable units altogether. "You want high frequency, but you don't want to be annoying," said Kaufman.

In addition to using Adify's own Network Builder platform, the new ad formats and others in the works also include ad technology from rich media providers such as Pointroll, Eyeblaster and Rovion. Networks using Adify's platform can also work directly with third-party ad technology vendors to adapt interactive units as they see fit.