• by December 8, 2000

In order to end the week on a good note, I'm going to stay away from projections today and instead give you a heads up on an advertising venue that may or may not blossom in the upcoming months - software advertising.

We're all fairly familiar with this concept of placing ads into software programs so that the ads stay in front of the users as they work, but software is certainly not the first place you would think of pouring your media budget into.

But if Opera has its way, that mindset might change.

Opera is a browser, much like Internet Explorer and Netscape, considered by some to be the fastest and smallest (in download time) browser available. So fast and small, in fact, that its 1.5 million current users were willing to shell out a $39 license fee for it.

On Wednesday, the Norway-based company announced the release of a new, ad-supported version of the software (available for download from CNET) and I decided to check it out, and after using the thing myself for two days, I must admit it's growing on me too.

The new version offers advertisers one single banner ad slot in the taskbar of the browser. Cydoor, a company specializing in the sales and serving on ads onto software programs, has been chosen to sell and serve the ads in Opera and has already convinced several advertisers to come onboard. The biggest selling point is that these banners are persistent - they stay on the user's browser regardless of whether the user is working online or off. The banners are downloaded into the browser only once a week, and cached for later use.

Is this ad vehicle worthy of consideration? Probably. The only downsides here are IE and Netscape market domination and, more importantly, clutter. But we'll have to wait for some metrics to gauge just how clutter effects Opera ads.