September 10, 2008, Mike Shields  Vibrant Media, which delivers contextually relevant ads on thousands of Web sites by highlighting and embedding links upon specific words, has launched a new product geared for publishers looking to increase time spent and page views on their sites.

The new Vibrant Related Content tool, similar to Vibrant’s existing “In-Text” ad product, allows publishers to highlight specific words within editorial content and direct users to other related stories on their sites. For example, a story appearing on a business news site about Ford Motors would see the word “Ford” highlighted--which users could mouse over and be presented with several links to other stories the site has produced on Ford.

The idea behind Vibrant Related Content, which is similar to tools that list “Related Stories” or “Most Emailed Stories” alongside many Web articles, is to keep users engaged, and keep them on a particular site longer, said Anna Kassoway, Vibrant’s vp, global marketing and creative solutions. “This re-circulates readers to more premium content,” she said, increasing stickiness, and ultimately increasing potential ad inventory.

Plus, Vibrant also plans to sell contextually relevant ad inventory within the small pop up boxes that appear as users mouse over highlighted words, said Kassoway—including text links, banners and video spots.

The company has signed on 50 partners to participate in an initial beta test of Vibrant Related Content. Meanwhile, Vibrant, which claims over 3,500 site partners which reach over 120 million unique users per month, will continue to run it’s patented in-iext ads, which it limits to two placements per Web page. Those ads, which feature a distinctive, double-underlined look, we recently deemed highly effective, according to a Nielsen Online study commissioned by Vibrant.

Among the 3,000-plus respondents queried by Nielsen from May 7 to May 16 of this year, half indicated a positive opinion of advertisers who use in-text ads, outdoing all other formats tested.

Source Article: www.mediaweek.com