15-March-2007

Advertisers have been quick to realise the potential for the online medium, particularly as bandwidth speeds have increased and more content-rich Web sites have led to people staying on the Net for longer periods of time.

According to Morgan Stanley’s Global Technology Trends - Presentation from SIA Annual Forecast & Award Dinner, November 2006, Internet ad spend is movin on up. However, the nature of the online medium is such that there is only so much space available on a Web page that can be dedicated to advertising, particularly as more advertisers vie for the best spots.

It is envisaged that significant targeting and conversion improvements could bolster annual global revenue per unique user for the major sites on the Internet.

What must be remembered is that without change in advertising solutions, the only real way for the site owners to increase their revenues is to increase the cost of each impression, but obviously this is anathema to advertisers, who always seek the lowest costs possible, says Grant Jackson, CEO of InPage, a company that has developed a revolutionary new online advertising solution.

InPage has been designed to take online advertising to a whole new level, by providing full screen, full motion, full screen, full sound adverts that do not appear in the traditional banner spaces usually reserved for adverts, nor do they have to vie for attention with the content on the site.

No matter how fast your Internet connection, there is latency between pages loading up and InPage takes advantage of this to deliver full screen, full motion ads that appear in the ‘white space’ between pages, he says.

Jackson says that this television-style advertising not only requires no code to be inserted into the Web site, it is also designed to scale with the browser window, so no matter what the size or resolution of the screen, the advert will fit to it perfectly.

This ability to scale to the size of the screen means that - while InPage will initially launch on the Web - it will release products designed for mobile phones in the near future, and the launch of InPageAds could not come at a better time as the fastest TMT (Technology/Media/Telecom) growth areas are the Internet and mobile phones.

From an Internet perspective, by loading between pages, this means that you can increase your inventory by the number of page impressions annually, which is a massive increase in advertising revenue at the end of the day.

He points out that a recent study by research firm Morgan Stanley indicated that Microsoft, for example, had a total number of some 505 million million global unique visitors last year, which shows just what a substantial difference InPage’s solution can add to the bottom line.

There are two models for Internet advertising: the first is that of cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and the second is cost per click (CPC), and traditionally those who buy ad space prefer to pay based on a CPC ratio, as this is directly quantifiable, although the site owners see their pages in effect as real estate space that must be paid for, so they tend to prefer the CPM model.

Then there is also what is referred to as the click through ratio (CTR), which is the ratio between CPM and CPC, but advertising trends have shown a significant downturn in CTRs since the first banners were displayed, falling from 2-3% in 1996/97, to today’s estimate of around 0.4%, although it must be noted that the best banners still show CTRs of 10-15%.

He believes that one of the major reasons for falling CTR is the fact that users have become more savvy  they don’t see the Internet as a new experience anymore and won’t simply click on a banner to see where it leads; normal adverts are also competing against more vigorous content on the sites and simply do not attract as much attention.

This is where InPage comes in, as our solution provides a phenomenal leap in terms of Web-based advertising delivery and methodology, because it brings television type ads to the Net for the first time, it is a true brand tool claims Jackson.

More pertinently, it has a captive audience, unlike the TV equivalent, since with TV, people often leave the room and do something else when the adverts come on, but online you are waiting for the page to load  you aren’t going anywhere in that short time  and we use this loading time in which to deliver an advert that is not only full screen and ideal for branding purposes, but is ideally suited to the CPM model.

He says that even the best banners that are achieving CTR of 15% are still limited creatively, due to the size and nature of banners, whereas InPage provides creative content and therefore creative impact, because it offers full screen, full impact advertising.

Another impressive thing is that while you are reading the page you requested, InPage is downloading the next ad set from the server, so that when you click the link to the next page, the ad appears instantaneously.

According to a recent study performed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, overall Internet advertising revenues in the US for 2005 totalled some $12.5 billion, a 30% increase on the figures for 2004, suggesting that there remains much growth in this space.

The study also points out that the growth trend will continue as new platforms such as broadband video emerge as real opportunities, and it is here that InPage can be expected to make massive inroads, considering that any bandwidth intensive trend will mean more loading time and therefore more time for the InPage ads to be effective.

Jackson refers back to the Morgan Stanley report which shows that there is continuous and global growth in numbers of Internet users, with a 14% global rise in number of users in a three year period, rising from 901 million in 2004 to 1.3 billion in 2007.

Imagine the potential impact of an advertising solution like ours, which will actually enhance the user experience, as it provides them with a sound and motion offering during the generally dead time while a new page is loading up.

Now from the advertisers perspective, imagine a fully customisable solution that can target adverts between every single page click, at every single one of that constantly growing 1.3 billion Internet user market, which is effectively a captive base - the potential for InPage is limitless, he concludes.