Vibrant Media Adds Video

Vibrant Media is adding video clips to its oft-maligned IntelliTXT in-text contextual advertising unit.

The new video ad unit will show a :15 or :30 video clip within the IntelliTXT unit, which appears when a user mouses over a targeted keyword on a publisher partner’s page. Alongside the video is a text area where the advertiser’s message will remain, along with a link to the advertiser’s site.

“IntelliTXT Video allows us to marry contextual and brand advertising. It speaks to TV advertisers and other brand advertisers,” said Doug Stevenson, Vibrant’s CEO.

IntelliTXT advertisers choose keywords they wish to target, and then those keywords are highlighted in green text with a double-underline within the body of a Web page’s content on a publisher’s site. Previously, when a user moused over the link, a text ad or a text ad with an accompanying graphic would pop up in a small ad unit at the point where the word or phrase appeared.

The original IntelliTXT ad unit found some detractors who felt the green-underlined words within a news story or other content were too confusing to users.

The video content itself can vary in size, with common sizes of 180×150 pixels, 125×125 pixels, or 234×60 pixels. Vibrant Media has a creative team that will resize video and Flash content for advertisers. Vibrant also offers advertisers help in choosing keywords and optimizing content for their campaigns. They are also able to share anonymous data from past campaigns to help identify keyword trends across industries.

Stevenson stressed the fact that the unit is designed to be user-friendly. The ad does not appear until a user mouses over an IntelliTXT link; then the video begins to play without sound for a few seconds to give the user a chance to close the window before the sound kicks in. In addition, there are audio and video controls the user can activate by mousing over them.

Vibrant Media has more than 1,100 publishers in its network, including iVillage, Hoovers.com, IGN and American Media. To incent its publisher partners to show the new video ad units, Vibrant offers higher payouts for them. Advertisers include Microsoft, Sony, Nike, Intel and Warner Bros.

Vibrant has been testing the video unit for several months. The unit has proven popular with movie studios and video game makers, since they have lots of video content as well as creative teams to take advantage of the opportunities, Stevenson said.