Chitika today have announced a new type of ad unit that I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peak of a few days ago.
It’s called the Viral Branding Unit (VBU) and you can see it in action on their VBU page but it looks like this:
This unit is currently in beta test but I’m told it’ll be released to all shortly. It’s an interactive ad unit which gives users of your blog the ability to actually interact with the ad. The ads are video based and have the ability for readers to leave comments, rating the ad, telling a friend about it – all on the ad itself.
I’ve seen a few blog networks provide advertisers with the ability to have readers give feedback before (I think Weblogs Inc did it) but this is definitely going in a new direction for ad networks. Of course leaving the ability to comment on ads is a risky business for advertisers and I’m not sure if there is any moderation policies – but it’ll be one way for them to get feedback on their advertising.
I’m told that advertisers will have the ability to control which of the viral components that their ads will have (ie they can turn off comments etc) but what moderation there will be I’m not sure.
These are CPC ads – Correction, these are CPM ads – I’m not in the initial beta test so can’t say how much they are paying – but I’m presuming that they’d be reasonably well priced ads as they are a little more intrusive than many other types of ads.
