• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 31, 2006

Pioneer Electronics will break online banner ads on a host of lifestyle and technology sites next week, as part of a new $20 million branding campaign promoting high-definition plasma TVs.

The banner ads--two standard flash units and two PointRoll expanding ads--will run online through March, said account supervisor Joelle Heise of RPA, the ad agency handling the campaign. Ads will appear on a mix of tech enthusiast sites, such as CNET, DigitalTrends.com and ElectronicHouse, and general business sites, like CNN Money, Forbes.com and Yahoo Finance. Ads break on TV this Saturday.

This campaign marks RPA's third effort for Pioneer since winning the account in 2003. Last year, the online portion of the ad initiative just focused on tech enthusiast sites, but this year the company hopes to reach a more general audience as part of its overall branding strategy, said Heise, who oversaw the interactive portion of the campaign.

Pioneer also is running a paid search campaign on Google, Yahoo and MSN. For that effort, the agency bid on general keywords, like "plasma TV," designed for consumers in the early stages of research, as well as Pioneer-branded words that relate to the new line of panels, Heise said.