Miva Launches a Publisher Contextual Network Combining Ad Units with Inline Ads

January 17th, 2007

MediaPost reports that Miva is launching a publisher ad network called Monetization Center that uses traditional contextual ad units alongside content, along with inline ads within actual content along the lines of Vibrant Media’s Intellitxt.

Miva is facing a tough site going up against Google Adsense and YPN, and frankly they don’t have the advertiser base those two giants do to help drive prices up and help have lots of ads in each niche. So how do you compete with them? You innovate with the product hoping to get enough publishers that the advertisers follow.

What is Miva doing to innovate? The first thing is providing the inline ads that look like dotted hyperlinks but show an ad on mouseover. These ads are effective from what I’ve heard on click-through rates, but many users and publishers find them annoying and intrusive. No matter what you think about them though, providing publishers with the option to use them is at least one thing they offer that Adsense and YPN aren’t offering.

How else will they differentiate? According to Mediapost:

Chrysi Philalithes, vice president of marketing and global communication for MIVA, said the company aims to provide more customization and transparency than larger competitors, and to give publishers a larger share of the revenue. She said that publishers’ share of revenue will increase based on the ads’ performance. Publishers will also be able to customize how the ads appear on their pages, Philalithes said. “Fonts, colors—we give a great deal of customization,” she said. “It’s really built there to get the publisher as much control and visibility as possible.”

So, I like the sliding revenue share increases, and I love transparency. I plan to check it out to see what customization they offer because Adsense and YPN already offer colors, but changing fonts could be interesting.

Good luck to Miva, the more competition in the contextual space the better.

• Miva to Launch Contextual Network
• MSN AdCenter Launches Content Network
• Google Adsense Reporting is Deceptive For Publishers
• Ask.com Is Launching a Contextual Search Network
• Why Do Contextual Networks Wall Us In?

Entry Filed under: Ad Networks, Advertising, Random