“New App Lets Banner Ads Listen, Remember, Respond”

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In the late 90’s I played a small part in our company’s early efforts to get on “the information highway.” We went all-in on an idea called AdActive. Proving, once again, that nothing ever dies on the Internet, I found the following on ClickZ. (1998)

Straylight in Seattle launched AdActive, a software product that allows existing banner ads to provide advertisers information on end-user brand perceptions, letting marketers target future messages based on individual responses.

Designed to support one-to-one relationships between customers and companies, AdActive works with a Web site’s existing ad delivery system or network to extend the traditional banner ad, the privately held company said.

Users are offered a number of options to tell advertisers what they think of the product or brand being presented without being taken away from the content they are viewing. AdActive then records the response so that it can be aggregated to provide detailed brand/product perception reports and used to more effectively target future ads.

“AdActive allows Web sites to realize new revenue by giving advertisers the ability to interact directly with consumers,” said Allen Hammock, technical director for Straylight’s AdActive Product Group. “Advertisers will also be able to look at what people think about their brand and products while giving Web surfers the ability to actively shape their online ad experience without registering or giving up their online anonymity.”

AdActive features a response bar, a small footprint Java applet, allows an individual to pass along positive or negative responses to an ad, contact an advertiser directly or even cancel an ad from being shown again.

The app gives advertisers the ability to respond to individual consumer brand perceptions with new advertisements or to refocus their efforts on consumers who chose not to respond at all.

AdActive is designed to work with NetGravity’s industry-standard ad delivery system, AdServer. The software is priced in a tiered structure based on a site’s traffic and computing resources.