• by August 24, 2000

All this talk about rich media has inspired Net-mercial, a streaming media startup, to enter the ad network space with an affiliate marketing program called Jump.Space. The new Jump.Space ads are activated when a viewer clicks on a link, and are played during the "jump" to the affiliate's website.

According to Net-mercial, there is a definite need in the ad market for technology of the "interstitial kind," regardless of whether the average web user has the bandwidth and software necessary to see or interact with the ad.

Why? Because interstitials have been shown to produce click through rates as much as ten times higher than traditional banner ads, increasing ad recall to levels almost twice as high as banner ads.

What makes Net-mercial stand out in the cyberscape, however, is that their interstitials integrate easily into existing campaigns – existing TV creative can be reused, for example, cutting down on high development costs generally associated with rich media. Also, Net-mercials, with the exception of ads created with Flash, are executed without the need for plug-ins and can be delivered in both narrowband and broadband environments, thereby reaching most Internet users.

The ads are currently sold by CMGI's AdForce and free site host FortuneCity.com, but as enticing as net-mercials and other interstitial formats are, advertisers aren't jumping on the wagon just yet. According to the International Data Corp., interstitials still account for only about 3% of U.S. Internet ad revenue (banners account for 58%).

But that's just growing pains.