Fast on the wings of the latest AdKnowledge study which showed that portal keyword placements generated higher click rates than other ad placements, Nielsen//NetRatings just reported that there’s a new name in the web’s top 10 web properties (based on reach), and it’s a portal. About.com was the No. 8 property on the web for the week ending July 30, according to NetRatings, bringing the total number of portals in the top ten list to eight - AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, Excite, GO.com, About.com and AltaVista, in order of "importance." Microsoft and eBay round out the list. …

Unicast, the creators of the SUPERSTITIAL, have just redesigned their website, so I thought it might be appropriate to talk about all those things that pop up on your screen and are rumored to be some of the best ways to capture someone's attention online. Interstitials is a blanket term for pop up ads and up until a few months ago you'd be hard pressed to find a wide-enough array of sites that supported Interstitials. However, as more sites and ad networks are accepting various interstitial formats, it's important to differentiate between the many types of these lively creatures. …

Ignoring several companies who disputed their self-proclaimed dominance of the online advertising world, Engage today announced internal research findings that demonstrate their "continuing ability to help advertisers achieve higher click- through rates and conversion rates through proven optimization methodology." The announcement claims that all of the advertisers who participated in the study achieved click-through rates of "more than double the industry average of 0.4%." Two points of contention: First, the 0.4% comes from a February 2000 Jupiter report, which has raised some eyebrows since most advertisers would peg average click-throughs at around 0.2%, and falling. Second, Engage …

Search engines are a mess. Site designers bend over backwards to include every possible keyword to score preferred placement while users have to wade through thousands of entries. Nevertheless, a huge percentage of web users do turn to search engines to find your dot-com clients and maybe search engines should be included in your media plan. Pay for search engine placement, you ask? Well, bid for it, actually. Whether or not the following concept will survive the test of dot-com time remains to be seen, but a recently- launched search engine, Win4Win, is hoping to make it by having websites …