By Erin Joyce
UGO Networks, a Web network of entertainment sites aimed at 18-34 year old men, has started offering a new ad unit that it hopes will deliver more impressions and bang for advertisers’ bucks.
Called the The Vendor Integrated Page (V.I.P.), the ad loads entire, fully interactive client Web pages within the UGO pages, which allows the user to click around on the advertisement without leaving the host site.
The VIP units launched on Valentine’s day along with its new Girlfriends Channel, which features comely women in bikinis as well as posters of female celebrities.
The launch advertiser for the new format is Diamond Trading Company, best known for its “A Diamond is Forever” advertisements, whose own site is embedded at the bottom of the page. The advertisement features sections such as how to create an engagement ring, and specifics about what to look for when purchasing a diamond and what’s hot in diamonds. Users can click through the advertising site without leaving UGO’s Girlfiends page, helping both advertiser and publisher to salvage impressions and page views.
Damian Bruno, director of marketing at the New York-based UGO, said the company came up with the “site within a site” ad format as a response to the issue of lower click-through rates on traditional banner ads.
With this format, the ad is fully integrated within that page, and the advertiser doesn’t have to worry about getting somebody to click off the site onto theirs, he said.
“The advertiser also gets a huge piece of real estate (on the UGO page) for branding,” Bruno said.
Bruno declined to discuss how much the VIP ads cost, but did say the new unit would be priced at a higher CPM (cost per thousand impressions) than traditional Web ads.
“The V.I.P. unit allows advertisers to put their best branding foot forward while sidestepping concerns about clickthrough and frequency,” said J Moses, President and CEO of UGO Networks.
“By loading an entire Webpage rather than a small and restrictive advertising billboard, the V.I.P. accomplishes multiple marketing objectives, efficiently delivering traffic to an ideal canvas for advertisers to sell their products or further their brand strategies.”
