InfoSpace to Distribute ContextWeb's Graphical Ads

Contextual advertising provider ContextWeb has inked a deal with InfoSpace where the search and directory advertising player will market ContextWeb’s contextual graphical ads to its publisher clients.

ContextWeb’s technology uses real-time indexing to analyze a page’s content on the fly to determine what category the page fits into. Ads that have been tagged for that category by ContextWeb’s advertisers are then served on that page. It can be used in tandem with third-party ad servers, including DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers, 24/7 Real Media’s OAS, or Accipiter.

The companies expect that the CPM pricing and graphical nature of the ads will make them especially attractive to agencies with brand marketing goals, Jay Sears, VP of business development and publisher relations for ContextWeb, told ClickZ News. This distribution deal with InfoSpace will provide additional inventory for those advertisers, he said.

“The ad agency market is always looking for us to expand the quality and reach of our distribution. Partnering with InfoSpace, one of the largest players in the search space, was a natural fit,” Sears said.

The joint service, expected to launch later this year, will be distributed to publisher partners like other InfoSpace search products. InfoSpace currently syndicates search and directory products to publishers. Publishers using its private-label services include ABC News, FOX News, Cablevision, Verizon Online and NBCi.com.

“We had evaluated the space and decided we were not going to respond with our own product, but we did want to have an answer for some of our clients,” Rob Raczkowski, InfoSpace’s VP of syndication for mobile and online, told ClickZ News. “It’s our first contextual deal for online distribution, where we saw a market need and responded with a partnership.”

ContextWeb began offering image ads through its network at the beginning of 2005. Text ads have run on the network since its launch in September 2004. While the text ads are sold on a cost-per-click basis, image ads on ContextWeb’s network are sold by the CPM model.