An article titled "Bringing Back the Banner" in WSM's premier issue met with rave reviews and for good reason. Once in a great while, technologies are introduced that change the way everyone markets and promotes products and services online.

Within the article, WSM suggests that one of the reasons that banners may have fallen out of vogue is because of their lack of "interactivity" and hence ability to generate attention and therefore those crucial clicks. A unique technology from Inoventiv however adds some salvation for those of our readers that just can not motivate themselves to buy a non-interactive, static 468x60 banner and it's called Search and Display. For the technology to work, the advertiser/client must have a database that Web users can search. Take for example a site which features downloadable ring tones - an end user could see the banner on a network site (even an affiliate or associate site) perform some action such as searching or scheduling a trip and results are returned from the advertiser/client's database.

WSM got to see a demo and we have to say it's an interesting technology whose only limitation is that of the advertiser's creative. It may be of interest to both advertisers (who can choose between CPC, CPM and CPA) and their affiliates in the very near future.