Bits & Bytes for August 25, 2004

PointRoll Launches New Polling Feature

Rich media ad developer PointRoll on Wednesday unveiled Pollster, a new interactive survey feature that instantly reports results to advertisers as ads are viewed.

Web audiences can respond to any number of questions on topics like current events, brands or products, and instantly see how their answers compare to the larger online community. Survey users have the ability to share opinions and attitudes, while advertisers can capture valuable information about brands, products and positioning.

“Our extensive product research shows that consumers of online ads enjoy advertisements that are engaging, but not intrusive,” said PointRoll COO Chris Saridakis. “Polling connects the advertiser directly to the opinion of the target, and our functionality links the two unobtrusively.”

The PointRoll Included Network includes 15 major publishers, including Yahoo and AOL, that offer PointRoll’s technology in their ad units. Recent additions include Alloy, Accuweather, Bloomberg and Homestore.

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Google Offers AdSense for Blogger

Following last week’s debut of the Blogger Navbar in place of ads on blogs it hosts, Google is making its AdSense content-targeted advertising program available to bloggers who use its Blog*Spot hosting.

“You may have noticed that we recently removed our ads from Blogger powered blogs. We were making money from those ads but you weren’t getting any of it. Now, we’re inviting you to set up your own Bloggerized AdSense account so that you make the money. What’s the catch? We’re going to take some of the action. Based on what we have learned from AdSense so far, this will work out very nicely for both of us,” said Google spokesman Biz Stone on the Blogger site.

Under the Google AdSense program, Google’s technology will determine what a blog’s posts are about and display the most relevant ads to readers.

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WebSideStory Updates HBX

Web analytics provider WebSideStory this week launched HBX V2, adding the ability to create segments and online marketing campaigns on the fly from within the user interface. Because HBX stores session-level data indefinitely, users can go back to any point in time and create a new segmentation of site visits.

The Tagless Campaign feature allows users to create online marketing campaigns at a moment’s notice, from within the user interface, and without having to alter the page code or tags employed by hosted applications.

HBX V2 also includes reporting on paid keywords versus organic search listings and an update of its Active Viewing feature, which now allows users to overlay key metrics such as link and page conversions right on top of their Web site.