Online ad agency The Thinking Media Corp. in New
York City said it won a U.S. patent for the technique that gives its ActiveAds technology its capability for
advanced tracking and reporting.
ActiveAds is a system of transaction-capable interactive banners featuring
reporting, serving, and e-commerce functions.
“We know we have something unique in ActiveAds,” said Owen Davis, Thinking
Media’s managing director. “We’ve spent the last year and a half hammering
ActiveAds into a superior system. Winning the patent distinguishes us from
our competitors, and gives us instant credibility with potential clients,
partners and investors.”
ActiveAds relies upon a Java-based 5kb “player” that loads when a banner is
accessed by a Web browser, the company said. The player then coordinates
delivery over the Internet of other Java components as needed to give the
banner such capabilities as secure credit card transactions, multimedia, and
dynamic content.
ActiveTrack, the reporting side of ActiveAds, uses the same technique to
consolidate information on activities of an ActiveAds banner, and then report
back to a central database, which makes information on a campaign’s
advertisements available in real-time. ActiveTrack will report on banners
that rely on HTML as well as Java.
ActiveTrack also records ads delivered from proxy servers.
The other elements of the system are Sonata, a development kit for creating
banners; ActiveTime for serving dynamic content; and ActiveCommerce, a back-
end for electronic commerce.
“The market is ripening,” said Don Westrich, Thinking Media’s director of
business development. “ActiveAds is the only Java system that’s accepted on
most major sites. We’re compatible with other serving and tracking systems.
We’re the only system that covers development, tracking, serving and
E-commerce. And Java will let us move onto new Internet devices like
set-top boxes.”
Thinking Media said it created the first-ever HTML interactive banner in 1996.