Miva Puts Text Ads In Site Content

Performance-based marketing network Miva is adding a new pay-per-click ad offering, an in-line text link that triggers a floating ad unit with site navigation and text ads when it’s moused over.

The unit, aptly named Miva InLine, mimics other controversial inline ad offerings like Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT, which show a contextually targeted text ad triggered by keywords within a site’s editorial content. However, it goes beyond just displaying floating ads when a user mouses over a specially underlined link by adding links to related articles on a publisher’s site above the ads.

InLine ads will be included in any ad buy across the Miva network, and keyword advertisers won’t be able to opt out of them. However, the company may consider offering them as part of a separate buy if marketers ask for that.

“Miva InLine helps publishers generate more revenue per page, without increasing ad inventory or impressions,” Seb Bishop, Miva’s president and CMO, told ClickZ. “Many publishers are experiencing a shortage of available real estate for ads. This will help solve those inventory shortages by better monetizing existing pages.”

When a user mouses over an InLine ad, a floating ad appears, showing the top-bidded pay-per-click ad from Miva’s advertisers for that keyword. Later this year, InLine ads will also include advertiser logos. Ads are clearly labeled, with a link to more detailed descriptions of the source of the ads.

Miva’s contextual targeting technology analyzes each page to determine what the page is about, so Miva knows what kind of ads to show, Bishop said. In addition, Miva’s SiteSearch technology regularly crawls the publisher’s site to find related pages, and the publisher can choose to include from two to five text links to those pages within the InLine unit, above an advertiser text link.

This allows publishers to show an additional ad on an existing page, and also to drive traffic to other pages on a site, opening up further opportunities to show ads, Bishop said.

Miva will maintain filters to prevent keywords from being tagged in sensitive or inappropriate articles, such as those about earthquakes or plane crashes.

A participating publisher can decide which pages or sections of their site the ads will appear on, the frequency of ads to show for each keyword, and how many keywords to allow on a page. Publishers can also set ads to appear on every instance of a keyword, or just the first one. Keywords will be underlined in a separate color from other hyperlinks on a page, to differentiate them from other hyperlinks. Publishers can also block competitor ads, adult content, and ads on specific keywords.

Miva InLine is available across Miva’s network beginning today, in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy.