I'm pretty sure that advertisers wouldn't subscribe to anything that took so much a wink or a nod from the User.
Advertisers can't get people to take any notice of their advertisements when they push them under people's noses.
If it took even the slightest action from Users, then they would do nothing and automatically avoid seeing any kind of advert........

Then how come google Adwords work so well?

check out techcrunch page on the right.. ther are similar ad companies that wants in on the action as well as federated media and so on..

advertising is a big market if you could create something that would niche the market way the go.. you wont have to wait long until google will create a siomilar product or buy yours...

gd luck

Google recently introduced text-link ads which are described exactly as you do: a combination of AdSense and Snap-like in-content ads.
http://www.webpronew...nk-ads-into-ppa-beta

Its been done dude ... you can see that implemented in many forums.

just because its done doesn't mean there is no room to compeat.

Now that Yahoo has released an API it should put a ton of pressure for Google to do the same for AdSense. If they do, you will see a huge market open up around alternative text ads. I think this is an outstanding idea - good luck!

I had a similar idea a few days back, feel free to borrow any ideas from this post: http://astartupaday....up-56-rent-my-links/

I have gone away, had a good think, and come back to this idea with a far more positive attitude......

I believe that, in actual fact, because this system of advertising isn't intrusive, potential customers will view it as a whole lot less negatively than banner ads, pop up ads and pop under (exit) ads.

It may even be that customers will view businesses who use this form of advertising as a lot more benign and responsible that the "in your face" advertisers (who never cease to annoy!).

I am going to vote for this idea............

Personally, I prefer banner ads. I very much dislike the pop-up style ads. Why? Well, you're reading a webpage, your scrolling down with your scroll mouse, and everytime your mouse happens to fall on top of one of these pop-up ad links, there's a delay while the ad is fetched, it covers the text you're trying to read, and just gets in the way. I suspect I'm in the minority with my feelings, though. :-)

This happens all the time, and you never said how this would compete.

Sorry TravellingGuy, I think you miss understand this is not a pop up service, because we all hate pop ups, its a pay per click hyperlink type thing.

S_baar, its a ad network. So you sign you website up to this network and we hook you up with advertisers.
Most hyperlink ads you have to do manually, this dose if for you.

its all about easy of use

So If I get this correctly I would buy a word that would be linked to my web site.

Now if I have a web site with text about my site I wouldn't want then central text to link to someone else site.

How would you work around this problem?

]V[oogy

I don't buy the "its been done, dude" think. As I always argue there would have been no google (only yahoo) if that kind of thinking prevail. Differentiation lies not only on the product idea per se, it is also about how you market it in a different way. Bring in the crowd and you are already half way to success! That's an expression of faith. :-)

Old Product plus crowd factor (e.g. Marketing Mob) = New Product.
Of course, New novel idea + crowd factor = super product!

Sail on G-L!

Well if you want to work on this project than i support you. There is alot of competition but with the right idea you could easily rise above. Good luck.

man all the best!
u are right if its done tht dsnt mean tht u cant give competition! only thin is u gotta take a different approach! and about advertisers taking it or not tht solely depends on weather it brings them leads or not!

Good Luck with your idea!
Actually I'm prefer banner ads because it is easy to seeand people will click it. By the way, I like to use the 'Snap Preview Anywhere' thing. Well, let's see what will happen when this idea combine both..

Hi Gods_light.
The idea is good but you need something extra to stand out, although I don’t know what.
Loads of success.
Tommy

Honestly, I've already seen this on a lot of blog sites. You hover your mouse over the link and little bubble pops up displaying the ad, then if you click the link it takes you to the advertisers page. I find it extremely annoying because when I'm reading online, I like to keep my place with my mouse without having to worry about clicking on ads.

Snap preview anywhere is the number 1 most annoying thing on the internet.

This has already been done by google ads, and it would be ridiculous to try and compete in the same market as them, now if you chose a niche market which has yet to be monotinized then you may stand a small chance.

This sounds exactly like : http://www.vibrantmedia.com/

(Examples of formats here: http://www.vibrantmedia.com/webpublishers/in-text_advertising/in-text_formats.asp )

So the question is, how are you going to improve on their offer?

I think there is a niche, as they require:

500,000 + page impressions per month

Use English as the primary language

Contain content across the following categories â€" Computing & IT,

General News, Business, Small Business

User profile as follows: C-level, IT professional, developer, business decision maker and technology consumer/enthusiast

there are business/sites that already employ this mechanism

if you have to advertise...why be so coy about it...

i personally dont like this subliminal/sneaky advertising. I would much rather that the advertising is not implicit...but on the contrary...in your face...so if you choose to ---> you can ignore it

or did i interpret your idea in a different way?

Already exists in several forms. There's already a system that scans content and applies ads to keywords. The links use a specific style that indicates it's an ad link and theirs an on mouse-over element that comes up which explains it's an ad.

Great idea! Advertising in is big business (just ask google). If you can claim even a small amount of revenue the business is worthwhile! You have my vote!

Market is too crowded, if the concept works. Others with more credibility will copy it.

I particularly like the idea of searching through the publishers site to detect keywords. Do you own a patent on this? Regardless, I would suggest that you allow the publisher to configure the service so as to limit the number of ads displayed per page. Too many of them would affect the reader's reading experience and may deface the page.

Secondly, you should know that a lot of people find Snap's previewing functionality quite annoying. I know they have done some work to improve it so that you now have to hover over a particular section of the link to get a preview, but it can still pop up unexpectedly and quite annoyingly.

That said, I think this idea has quite some potential. All the best with it.

Willcom, Thanks for your comments.

Yes I agree that there has to be a limit to the ads per site. I think I would leave that up to the webmaster, they selected up to a max of say 25 links per page.

Yes snap ads can be annoying but I was mostly using them as a visual, they are easy to picture. I don't even think I would have a pop up at all... they are so annoying. Just hyperlinks.

The idea does have potenial. Advertising on the internet needs a better approach. Something more appealing....

don't let the naysayers rain on your party. Find a niche and keep it simple and this will succeed.

great idea

a good idea, succes in this way

I think its a good idea listen to Willcom and Allan...keep it smooth.... I think a transparent fade in overlay for say 3 seconds it keeps the enviorment less caotic and not so rude.Then the ad snaps away ....In that 3 seconds it gives the info, the perts.The person on the web surfing can click or tag it if they want to .....unlike a pop up that you click off because its there.

This is, without a doubt, the best idea in this tournament.

Here's why: The online advertising market is bigger than most of us realize. For instance, Google bought YouTube for $1B, right? Next thing you know, thousands of online video sites popped up trying to out-innovate each other to become the next YouTube. Last month Microsoft bought an online ad company many people have never heard of (aQuantive) for SIX TIMES the cost of YouTube. And where's the innovation in the ad space? Banner ads? Little boxes in website margins with context-sensitive links? Come on, people, we can do better! The market is just waiting for the next big ad idea to come along, and when it does, the owner will be handsomely rewarded.

Here are a few thoughts to add on to this gem.

The hard part of online advertising is simultaneously building a backend network of advertisers along with enough sites willing to embed ads in their content. Classic chicken-and-egg problem. Why not leverage an existing backend ad network (Yahoo just opened their ad network via API - expect others major ad networks to do the same) and just focus on building out the ad-serving technology.

And why not come at this with a very specific goal. For example, building out this "Search Ads" concept but make it unbelievably easy to use. It may not have all the bells and whistles, but set a goal like "less than one minute to sign up and start making money" and center your business around making that happen.

GL - keep up the awesome ideas. Come on, CH, let's rally behind this one and push it to the top!!

darn..GL better try next round... i am solved on the merits of the other much needed IDEA at the moment, than an extra ordinary good IDEA that incidentally was yours.

Good thing CH its a weekly tournament but i stil hope it will be bi-monthly nextime...

You got a winning entry!

Btw: Any idea on the rateof on going ads per "second"(whatever basis) on the internet?

Keywords link to ads...

http://www.pocketnow...=reviews&id=872

Probably not quite what you had in mind but something similar. I used to see lots of spam pages with links like these, now not so much. I think maybe Google devalues "real" links on such pages (as each additional link on a page devalues all others a bit), and it turned out to be an issue for spammy sites which are all about leveraging hyperlink values.

I think this approach to advertising is NOT terribly intrusive. I don't mind it, but I do remember it was mostly found on spammy sites. I'd wonder why that was (and why its so hard to find examples now).

Thanks Gord,

Similar idea I just found: http://www.kontera.com/?id=41

Gods_Light

I think this would work if it was used in combination with my idea on Connected_Passion. Have you ever looked at how much money you spend on something that you are passionate about? My brother, who is a fine audio aficionado, spend $10k per years...You do not need to catch these guy's attention, they are looking for ways to buy things for their passion.
Great idea! Needs to be targeted at the right buyers on the right site with targeted advertisers.

Bruce

From a user perspective, you need some way of differentiating your ads from standard hyperlinks within the website, otherwise this is going to get very off-putting. That shouldn't be too hard though, using CSS etc.

I also like the fact that it can work even from a small start - you only need a handful of sites to adopt it and you can start selling ads, then sit back and hope it grows.

http://www.linksincontext.com - my site - we are still in BETA testing, but I think this is what the original poster is describing. If you like the concept, come on over and help us make it a reality!

Collaborate guys... and see yeah in the next round!

I really like the idea of simple hyperlinks, no pop-ups, no ajax, no images, and most importantly, no NONSENSE! This kinda thing could be really good for everyone involved!

However, I do have a suggestion to make:
I read in Business2.0 mag that Yahoo is working on a way to see keep track of what sites (w/in the Yahoo domain) you pull up (like some geocities website). It will then analyze the content and add it to your database profile (not visible to you). They will then further analyze it and cater to your actions... For example, lets say that you visited 5 sites/pages that were on how to buy a car, which car to buy, and/or car listings. The next day you get online and visit a site on Anime, but the advertisements you see will be about some kind of car some kind of car! They could potentially even narrow it down to a brand and style of car given enough information! This is highly targeted advertising based on casual user browsing; and it will significantly increases the success rate of the advertisements.

Now, if you could combine that kind of thinking/operation into your product (some minor javascript to track IPs could work), I think you'd have Google eating out of your hands within 6 months!

Best of luck to ya!

Banner ads is simple and tolerable...

I like this idea and it is doable.

However, what is to stop google from using the same idea? I could see it happening soon.

As well advertisers would likely pay less for such a service. Part of advertising is the subliminal thing. You may not click on an ad right away but you notice the graphics. That is why graphic banners may not get a click on the first view but the 10th view of the ad.

With your system, no one will see the ad unless they click.

I wish you luck with this. It would be an interesting experiment to see your success rate.

However as mentioned above, the online advertising market is still in its infancy. A very small market share could be huge!

I remember being turned off by a site using something possible similar a long time ago, mousing over a link would bring up a short description and a image and link... I hated it. Mainly because the ads were irrelevant to the articles I was reading, and also because they appeared over the the article text, getting in the way of my reading.

I don't like advertising much, but I'm going to have to do it on my own site, and yes, there's lots of money in it. Every hyperlink might be overkill, certain words in the page might be more beneficial. If you were to do word indexing to find the type of info on the page, or ... this is because I'm drunk, but.... scrape the content, put in a temporary server page with google ads on it, scrape the google ads content, and then use that to analyze for the types of ads to put up. then convert the relative words into adlinks. If the publisher's pages were well formed, you should be able to use a bit of Javascript and CSS to place the advertisement bubbles away from both the mouse and the main text, which would annoy the users less, and then, possibly, with a bit of xmouse/ymouse and maths, expand the bubble div from, say, 25% to 100% if the mouse rapidly moved toward the bubble, or hovered on the bubble.

I feel for it to be effective, contextualisation is key, after that, minimising user frustration, somehow utilising mouse input to do that might be the go. Google's logic in finding appropriate ads is great, you might be able to do something with their API. I'd go so far as saying to the client that their ad *won't* be placed if the context in not appropriate, giving them better placement, allowing you to ask for a little extra when you do place it right. Depends on the business model.

It's very interesting to watch advertising catch up to the internet.

Look at how pervasive, sophisticated and advanced advertising is in other media - print, product placement in movies, TV ads, etc. It's a huge business with a lot of talent in it.

Then look at how crude the ads on the internet are. Google ads are smart in that they are context-sensitive. But there is so much more potential.

Like it or not, the internet is going to be as much of an advertising vehicle as TV, radio and print now are. We are lucky to have had it ad-free for so long.

G_L if your idea is something that can be developed without megabucks, I would say that the internet advertising industry is wide open and ripe for competition.

I hope you will look at the various products mentioned above, including eacahoon's project. If you guys are working on the same thing it would be good to collaborate.

PS What your idea describes sounds very like Google Ads as they now are. How is your idea different?

Sounds good... but what to do whit the real links in the website? You don't know what the real link is and what the advertisement link is...

Anyway; nice video =D

Jill - the difference between AdSense (google ads) and the proposed idea is using standard links within the content of a web site - not stand alone ads that use JavaScript to display links. With standard links you get additional link-juice to improve your standing in the search engines.

Hey GL,

Great idea and I say go for it. Couple of comments - how do you limit the number of words that will be affected on the site - potentially every word is a keyword......
How are you planning on marketing - ie: where will you place your ad?
What are you using as a click-thru benchmark that suggests you will be successful enough to fund the BP?

Just some random thoughts?

Squint -

I am not sure how GL would position his idea, but my site does not depend on click-thru - it is used to improve your search engine ranking - potentially an even more effect method of advertising than the ads themselves.

...ads is always a way to earned the big bucks... i like this! I hope i had installed flash and saw your bus.pitch video in this old desktop i got at the moment.

May the Light of God shine with you always! ;-)

Gods_Light, I think the trick (if it is possible) is to somehow leverage AdWords using this approach. It would be against Google's AdWords terms of service, as they are very strict about how their ads are displayed. But they're doing most of the work for you by finding the $ making ads. Their infrastructure on this is incredible.

If you could somehow leverage that by letting pages which use AdWords modify their placement so that they appear when appropriate words are clicked-on or hovered-over... then you could achieve your be-less-annoying goals withouth having to re-built all the AdWords infrastructure. I see it being possible with javascript which you store on your site, which modifies placement of Google's AdWords.

This approach entails a small research operation... can JavaScript reposition AdWords? Other aspects (like associating the ads with relevant content words) would be kept simple, since the correct ads are already found for the entire page... it then becomes a question of which words on the page are a best fit... that that might be nothing more than word or synonym matching on the page itself (all done with client side script).

I like the idea of thinking about less advertisements and we should not afraid of big guys like Google we have less money but we are faster and smarter! Think through and launch something, the market is big enough :-)

Amazon already offers a service like this. See http://www.jackbauertorturereport.com for an example of it in the wild. After the page loads, mouse over any of the words that are double underlined.

Viola... nonintrusive ads from a major online retailer. So in summary, been done.

No, it has not been done. They have hideous popups! Review the video.

I like the popups on the JBTR. They are tasteful and non intrusive.

"See http://www.jackbauertorturereport.com
... nonintrusive ads from a major online retailer."

??? The ads cover the text. It is strange how half the page is wasted (margin), and the ads still encroach on the text. Is something wrong with my monitor?

Put the popups in the margins. That much should be a given.

"...a transparent fade in overlay for say 3 seconds it keeps the enviorment less caotic and not so rude." Yes, excellent (in the margin)!

In the margin
Transparent (easy as possible on the eyes, no video/audio)
Fade in
Turn off automatically
All these are good, and with topical relevance might even make it useful for the user.

"My brother, who is a fine audio aficionado, spend $10k per years...You do not need to catch these guy's attention, they are looking for ways to buy things for their passion."
Great idea! Needs to be targeted at the right buyers on the right site with targeted advertisers.

Yes, the highest contextual relevance is important for all.

"it can work even from a small start - you only need a handful of sites to adopt it and you can start selling ads, then sit back and hope it grows."

The little guy might be able to broker deals between the users and advertisers, especially in niche markets, where users and advertisers overlap (maybe like the audiophile examples). Google and Yahoo won't be able to dial in the niche markets with near the same precision.

The potential here seems huge.

I like the idea. As I am technologically challenged; I can however offer very little constructive criticism other than give you a high 5.

Please accept my apologies for the slang "high5" What I meant was that You get my vote. I am also assuming that High 5 is a positive expression ? Lol.

I understood the "slang" :) Yes, high five is positive :)

This is a great idea, I love it. I would consider the long tail here and linking interesting and unique product affiliates. AdWords is serious with their quality control, the text of an ad must be accurate to the landing page. They want the user experience to be a good one to encourage their audience to continue clicking on the ads. You may consider an algorithm or process that targets those keywords that offer the highest relevance and interest to the reader.

Consider a blog references a travel adventure in Colorado that included camping, rafting, and bird watching... You would not want travel to link to Yahoo! travel, rafting to Big 5 Sporting Goods, that's not a quality experience and as a user I am not going to click through very often. However, if they may reference a Tieyak that protected their Kayak from thieves or Bird Watching could be linked to something creative and fun. Thrilllist.com (I am not associated) has a newsletter and the links are interesting, they are fun and promotional and encourage click through. I understand this is not as scalable, but a consideration for strong, relevant, and interesting ads will increase click through and due to relevance probably raise cost-per-click as well. Easier said than done, but that is what Cambrian House is for right? Great job, I dig your ideas!

(Off topic: I have often thought, why would Google really want to improve upon their organic search, given the improved results will detract from AdWords? Anyway...)

I think the outdoor adventure blogger example is useful: The blogger might be inspired to reference Tieyak and other products that contributed to their experience. Could Search Ads broker this exchange between the web site administrators (bloggers and similar) and the most relevant companies? Maybe the bloggers could select relevant companies from a master list. It is more work for them, but they are compensated, and they get to represent relevant and appropriate companies.

I think this is a great idea!

"Maybe the bloggers could select relevant companies from a master list."
I don't think it would be a good idea to let the user getting paid chose the ads because of fraud. Not all ads have the same value or get the same frequency.

the idea really is doable

5 stars for you!

["Maybe the bloggers could select relevant companies from a master list."
I don't think it would be a good idea to let the user getting paid chose the ads because of fraud. Not all ads have the same value or get the same frequency.]

Companies that produce the selected ads could be charged for placement and per-click fees. Companies with ads not chosen don't pay for placement. Should company membership be charged? Well, they are getting their ads in front of the web administrators. Also, you could arrange some general advertising activity that would further justify company membership.

It seems the web administrators in a market niche would make the most valuable advertising connections, and it would be almost impossible to match that with an outside team or any algorithm.

"I don't think it would be a good idea to let the user getting paid chose the ads because of fraud. "

Oh, I see; The web administrator could have his readers click ads to game the system and generate income unfairly. Is that the objection?

I'll try to think of a disincentive for cheating.

Well in the ad world, some key words are more popular and generate more money then others. What you want is relevant keywords to the content and not click fraud.

If an admin got to pick keywords, lets say with google or msn or any adservice for that matter. That would allow him to cheat the system and send unrelated users to the other site. Most advertisers pay for relevant users.

IDK if that explained it quite right. Anyways ya, keep the click fraud rates down.

Web administrators could earn a small amount if someone visits the advertiser and makes a purchase. Adjust the per click amount (or eliminate it) and the per purchase amount to dis-incentivize click fraud. Then, the administrator and the advertiser become vested in the performance of the advertisements. Search Ads should earn for tracking that performance.

"Not all ads have the same value or get the same frequency." Yes, the list of advertisers might need to show some rate ranges.

Web administrators might also be allowed (encouraged?) to post a page of blurbs explaining their endorsement choices. This strengthens the endorsements and could also serve as disclosure to the readers.

The web page owners should not have a say in what keywords they get. It should be based on how relevant there site is to the keywords.