• by Masha Geller , July 2, 2003

When SF Interactive launched the Ad Cube in the middle of March, it promised the new ad would move, talk, offer a wealth of information and possibly do away with the click-through as a measure of online ad success. It took a few months, but Forbes.com has finally decided to give the format a shot. Forbes.com, which already offers a variety of rich media formats from vendors like United Virtualities, Klipmart, EyeWonder and Eyeblaster, yesterday said it has agreed to offer the Ad Cube (Ad3) to advertisers, becoming the first online publisher to offer the ad platform as a part of its inventory.

The Ad Cube is "a multi-dimensional, interactive advertising and branding environment that allows online viewers to interact with strategic marketing content in uniquely engaging and fully-measurable ways."

According to the San Francisco-based agency that invented it, the name of the new unit comes from what advertisers can put into it - the unit is a large-format online ad that works like a microsite, housing video, sound, 3D and Flash animation, and text-based documents and content. SF also claims the Ad Cube keeps viewers on-site longer, instead of redirecting them to other sites via click-throughs typically associated with banner ads, pop-ups and interstitials. At launch, Bruce Carlisle, President of SFI, said, marketers had been searching for a multi-purpose branding vehicle that extends, re-purposes and integrates rich media content developed for their marketing, advertising, sales and business development programs, and the Ad Cube does just that, while conforming to current IAB standards. While no Forbes.com advertisers have yet signed to test-drive the format, SF Interactive has already deployed the Ad Cube for several clients including Cisco, VeriSign and Quantum. Examples can be found at http://www.sfinteractive.com/ad3.