Infolinks Battles Banner Blindness

If Display is Broken, Is Infolinks In3 the Creative Fix?

Many digital advertising gurus have been heralding the end of display for - geesh, I don't know - about as long as I've been on the 'Net (that would be pushing fifteen years by the way). In that time, I feel as though I've seen it all. But perhaps I haven't!

Infolinks, a digital advertising platform with a rather extensive history on the 'Net, has released a new suite of real-time, intent-based advertising products dubbed In3 (which stands for Infolinks, Intent and Intelligence). The set of ad units, according to Infolinks, appear in "unexpected but sensible spots on the page".

"Online display advertising is fundamentally broken," says Dave Zinman, InfoLinks new chief executive officer (and the former GM of Display at Yahoo!). "Site visitors rarely notice ads, there are too many and most are irrelevant. Engagement metrics are down. Banner blindness is killing the golden goose. This is the reason I've joined Infolinks. The In3 platform was developed expressly to deliver high-performing, creative solutions. In fact, Infolinks ads have been shown to deliver 30 times the engagement rate of standard IAB units."

30 times the engagement rate is quite the draw, but let's take a closer look at the formats to see if this is the hope we need or the hype we don't:

InFrame: Monetizes unused screen margins, framing site layouts with display banner ads. The In3 platform auto-detects when the browser window is wider than the website and inserts display ads that remain stationary as users scroll down the page.

InSearch: An overlay that appears when vistors arrive via a search engine. The unit features messaging relevant to the users query and dissappars after a few seconds, shrinking to a headline sized ad.

InTag: A tag cloud of keywords (more of a linear listing really) relevant to the content, which when clicked, pops up a window leading to advertising.