This is old, but I don't think we've seen it:
Reprinted from Internet World magazine Vol. 8 No. 12, (c) 1997 Mecklermedia Corporation. All rights reserved.
MARKETING
Java Fuels New Ads
Online ads are taking the first steps beyond hyper- linking, with a new ad generation using Java to deliver complete applications at Web sites.
An early leader is Narrative Communications, whose Enliven system can create fully interactive animated ads. New Balance used Enliven to ask questions about users' athletic habits and
shoe preferences, then displayed selected styles--all within the banner and without requiring the user to click away from the site where the ad appeared. Enliven uses a Java client and its own server to deliver the applications, which can be created in Macromedia Director.
This kind of "nested" ad content, which tries to engage a viewer within the confines of the banner ad, is on the rise. "The biggest problem with banner ads is that people don't feel like clicking away," says Don Senerath of Digital Pulp, who has developed Nano-Site, a Java-based banner ad that delivers multiple "nano-pages" and streaming media within the banner space. Nano-Site is used on sites run by Individual Investor Online, DoubleClick, and BizTravel.
First Virtual Holdings is taking ads to the next logical level: transactions. With its VirtualTAG banners, users can make credit card purchases within the banner while First Virtual processes the back-end transaction. VirtualTAG is available but no one has yet used it for online selling.
EchoMedia is accommodating TV-advertising models on the Net. "We're trying to bring their TV ads to the Net," says Monique Gulati Burgess of EchoMedia, whose Java-based Sesame-Ad system converts TV ads into Web-capable software files. Sesame-Ads then take advantage of download wait time to pop up a separate, small advertising window to play the commercial. Sandals Resorts is a charter advertiser.
Sesame-Ad also tries to duplicate the detailed viewer tracking that TV advertisers are used to, including time of day and time zone. Burgess envisions a future when advertisers will make time-zone buys on the Net.
Dave Zinman, co-founder of Focalink, a maker of
Web-advertising products, points out that the cost to support these new technologies can be prohibitive to a site. "But it's the promise of Java and embedded HTML that is fueling experimentation," he says. Focalink found that Java is running at only 17 percent of the sites it surveyed, with Shockwave at 14 percent and embedded HTML at 2 percent.
Zinman says, "Marketers are experimenting before they've even determined that it's the optimal technology for their message. I don't think anyone understands what all this technology could mean."
--A.D.
internetworld.com
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