• by Laurie Sullivan , April 1, 2011

AdKeeper is making a push to increase the presence of the "Keeper" ad button across advertising partners and publisher sites. CEO Scott Kurnit says the online advertising technology company has secured about 20% of the available Internet advertising inventory under contract, including Pepsi, which committed 100% of its ads beginning in May.

AdKeeper's business model encourages people to click a small icon in display ads they save in a personal file on the company's site. Kurnit, who also founded About.com, says even if the person doesn't go back to click on the ad later, the hand-and-eye coordination of moving the ad to the Keeper makes a "deeper impression on the brain."

A marketing promotion called "Point of Button," being designed along with Los Angeles agency ignited, will soon make its way onto the Web. The campaign will explain how the buttons are used.

Whether consumers adopt the practice of keeping an ad will determine the company's success. Only 10% of television shows recorded on DVRs are watched at a later time, he says. "We know from internal research that not all ads will be engaged with later, but the initial engagement of keeping the ad is better than an impression."

The available space in ad units and button bars could become overcrowded. Consumers will soon begin seeing "F," "T," "+1," social media tags, along with the advertising option icon and the AdKeeper "Keep" button, according to Kurnit. Advertisers attempting to figure out how to make social media effective in ads want some answers. So far it has not happened.

Putting the "Keeper" button on coupons or special offers could spur adoption, but all that remains up in the air, Kumit says.

Publishers' specifications and requirements to load buttons like AdKeeper's in ad units appears to have slowed adoption for the company, although Kurnit would have advertisers believe differently. It's not that publishers don't want to use the AdKeeper button, but rather there were technical and privacy issues the industry had to overcome.

The approval process to add a button in Yahoo's ad units typically takes an undisclosed amount of time, but the tech giant confirmed working with AdKeeper, demonstrating its acceptance in the practice. While time constraint became a slight detour that Kurnit didn't expect before launching the platform in beta a few months ago, he says the soon-to-launch marketing campaign should educate the industry and consumers on the "Keeper" feature.