Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

76 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
a Web page, offering the appearance of editorial matter even
though the message is advertising.
Buttons. Buttons are typically small banners. They often run next
to one another at the side or bottom of a page. They tend to look
more like sponsorship ads than promotional ads. Some advertisers
feel that their less salesy nature might improve the chances of
higher click-throughs.
Interstitials or Pop-ups. Interstitials appear between Web site
pages. The new page loads, and an interstitial pops up to convey
something about a company and its products or services. Because
of their intrusive nature, there is a significant annoyance factor,
yet interstitials have been shown to outpull banner click-through
rates in a number of online advertising studies. One company,
Unicast (www.unicast.com), has developed the superstitial, a “polite”
interstitial that only plays when it is completely loaded. It is
now available on a number of Internet advertising networks, including
Engage’s AudienceNet, an online profile-driven ad network
(www.engage.com). Recognizing the b-to-b ad surge, Engage
launched a new division in May 2000, Engage Business Media.
The superstitial occupies nearly the full screen and utilizes rich
media (more on that later). There is also a variation to interstitials
which some advertisers are testing—a “Webmercial,” which essentially
is an under-10-second commercial played over the Web.
Growing evidence seems to indicate that interstitials are proving
to be more effective than banner ads. Interstitials accounted for
4% of all advertising revenue in 2000, according to the Internet
Advertising Bureau.
Skyscrapers and Boxes. Take a look at CMPnet (www.cmpnet.com),
ZDnet (www.zdnet.com), and C|Net’s News (www.news.com) to
see the changing face of Internet advertising. The first two sites run
numerous “skyscrapers”—long, narrow vertical ads that appear
to the right or left of the editorial page. They’re hard to miss, even
as a site visitor scrolls up or down the page. Several of CMP’s individual
sites provide advertisers with “extramercials”—vertical ads
that run along the right side of the editorial space on the Web page.
They are intermingled with editorial matter; visitors click on a bar
that says “Expand Ad” to make the entire ad appear. “Messaging