Internet portal Ask Jeeves has found a way to eliminate those annoying banner advertisements on Web sites and still allow advertisers to reach Web surfers.
The company will announce this week a new method of advertising called Text Sponsorship, an auction-based tool that allows companies to target text-based impressions at customers through keywords across a partner network of destination sites and portals.
After users type in a search keyword on a partner's Web site, a portion of the search results page is devoted to companies peddling their wares, Ask Jeeves officials said. Advertisers purchase keywords by bidding on them; bidding starts at US$5 per 1,000 impressions and moves forward in 50-cent increments, they added.
"Text Sponsorship ... has offered a unique opportunity to penetrate deeper into our existing advertisers' budgets, instead of those clients who just purchased banner ads on a fixed monthly budget," said Don Beavers, chief technology officer for Monetize Media.com.
Since moving from the flashy banner ads to the keyword-driven, text-based ads, Monetize Media has increased its visitor click-through ratio by almost 50 percent, from 2 percent to 2.9 percent of all visitors, Beavers said.
In addition to 1,800 advertisers in the Ask Jeeves distribution system, 900 of which are active, the company has five network partnersÃÆ'Ã,¢Ã¢,Ã,¬"Ask.com and DirectHit.com, both of which are part of Ask Jeeves; Microsoft MSN. com Search; Bomis'Bomis.com; and Monetize Media's SuperCyber Search.
