• by Ken Liebeskind , March 7, 2002

There has been a lot of discussion in the online advertising industry about the importance of click-through rates. Most advertisers agree that CTRs are not the best metric for measuring a campaign’s success, but no one has yet figured out a better one.

Thus, advertisers continue to count clicks, and media vehicles continually look for ways to make that process as easy as possible for their clients and it appears one network is ahead of the game.

UGO Networks, a young men’s entertainment network that reports 10.2 million monthly uniques, has figured out a way to guarantee click-throughs by serving their client's home page as the actual ad.

On Valentine's Day, in coordination with the launch of their Girlfriends channel, UGO introduced the Vendor Integrated Page (VIP), which is a huge 775 x 600 pixel ad unit surrounded by site content.

"The advertiser gets a tremendous piece of real estate because you load their whole site," says Damian Bruno, UGO's director of marketing. "The user interacts with the client without leaving our page and there are no browsers or pop ups."

The VIP ad loads just like a banner when the end user requests the page and the ads appear in what’s called an I-Frame in the middle of the page.

The biggest benefit for advertisers is a guaranteed click through. "For every impression, you see the home page," Bruno says, because advertisers run their full homepage as the ad.

Adiamondisforever.com, a site run by Diamond Trading Company (De Beers) is the first advertiser. No one else has run the unit yet.

Due to concerns about page weight, load times and general aesthetics, UGO plans to be selective in terms of which advertisers will run the ad units and which pages the ads will call. The goal is to integrate pages and products that make sense within particular content areas without diminishing the user experience.

The advertising opportunity seems valuable but will also be expensive. "There is no rate card yet, but each impression lands you at the site so it will be sold on a CPM model at a higher rate than banners or pop-ups, because you get 100 percent click through," Bruno says.