• BusinessWeek/Online Media Daily, Wednesday, March 11, 2009 12 PM

Display ads may not be getting much respect these days, but several major Web publishers are hoping to spark new interest in the tactic as part of the Online Publishers' Association's unveiling of three new display ad formats, as reported Tuesday in Online Media Daily. The main goal is to engage readers more fully, and allow publishers to charge advertisers more. BusinessWeek says the initiative is supposed to offer an alternative "to the increasing encroachment of cheap ads served on their sites by advertising networks, which many premium sites think are devaluing their ad space."

The three new units are bigger than traditional display ads and more interactive, allowing viewers to bookmark and come back to them in the same way they do Web pages. Publishers taking part in the test include BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Time, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, USA Today and others. In total, the consortium represent two-thirds of the U.S. Internet audience. Each have commited to offering at least one of the ad formats by July.

The OPA test encourages brand marketers to get more creative with their online ads, which just about everyone in the business agrees aren't as engaging as television or print ads. The test ads will only be available through the direct sales forces of OPA members. "This will help to reduce clutter and to some extent prevent the Web from becoming a direct-response junkyard," says Andreas Combuechen, CEO and chief creative officer of Atmosphere BBDO. "Search has taken a lot of the attention. The industry needs something new to get reinvigorated."

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