• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 12, 2010

Imagine changing prices in your content management system, and have the ads on the Internet reflect the changes immediately. In a move toward the real-time Web, Liquidus is working on a feature in its BannerLink ad that allows advertisers to alter prices from their content management system, and have the changes reflect online as soon as they occur.

The next product version also will have automated "human voiceover" capability. Today, Liquidus' ad offers a text-to-speech feature, where a script automatically generates a voiceover. Newly created technology, scheduled for release between July and September, will let Liquidus record sound bits of human speech and stitch the script together.

Liquidus' rich media video banner ad format holds huge amounts of data. It allows advertisers to add tons of inventory specs in one advertisement. For example, an auto dealer can have up to 200 car listings in one banner ad. Each listing might support a video that includes animation and several other functions.

Chris Carlton, executive vice president of creative services and co-founder of Liquidus, insists that consumers interact with the ads at least eight times more than the average industry banner ad, with an average interaction rate of nearly 17%. He compares it with information in DoubleClick's 2008 Year-In-Review Benchmark Report.

A typical banner ad has about two or three types of media to interact with, such as playing a video, or mousing over the ad and watching it expand. A BannerLink rich media ad holds hundreds of product listings to scroll and sort through. They can look at the thumbnails, request more information, or call the dealer.

Liquidus sells the ad platform to Comcast, which in turn sells the space to their advertisers. The deal gives the cable company an opportunity to bring in additional revenue it did not have the chance to sell before. "This product represents an additional $3.5 million in additional sales that Comcast did not generate the year before," he says. "In December, Comcast sold 14 of these campaigns using BannerLink to 14 auto dealerships in Chicago."

The campaigns contributed nearly 3 million impressions and had an engagement rate over 28%. People engaged with the 14 campaigns for more than 800 hours. The click-through rate for the campaigns exceeded .05%.

Interestingly, Liquidus' asset aggregation and distribution products are offshoots of video-on-demand services originally developed for Comcast. The company does not traffic the ads. Instead, it relies on publishers to target the ads.