• by Masha Geller , October 5, 2003

For one day in early September, Ford caused quite a stir in the online advertising world when it took over the home pages of the world's top three web portals to launch its F-150 truck. Today, business technology optimization firm Mercury Interactive (not to be confused with an automaker of the same name,) is taking over an entire site to launch its new Get Optimized! advertising campaign. And the site is Forbes.com - home page to many of the world's business leaders.

Today, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PST, Mercury Interactive will advertise on all Forbes.com windows, billboards, columns, banners and buttons.

Mercury Interactive is using the site takeover format for the first time. John Bruggeman, vice president of marketing at Mercury Interactive, said, "We are taking an aggressive approach in promoting our message to business leaders because once they realize the business value that BTO delivers, they will turn to Mercury to Get Optimized."

The site takeover on Forbes.com will promote the recent launch of the Mercury™ Optimization Centers, designed to align disparate IT functions by consolidating and centralizing the software, services, and best practices used for IT governance, application delivery, and application management. With the introduction of the Optimization Centers, Mercury Interactive is setting the agenda for how to run IT as a business and maximize business value from IT.

"Business technology optimization is an area that our audience - senior business decision makers - is becoming more and more aware of and focused on," said Bill Flatley, VP, chief advertising officer, Forbes.com. "So we're extremely pleased that Mercury Interactive selected Forbes.com to launch this exciting new campaign, especially in the site takeover format."