PageGrabber Take-Over Ad Unit Bows
Top Web publishers — backed in part by the Online Publishers Association — have spent the last year or so testing bigger, more in-your-face ad units.
That effort has one goal: attracting traditional brand dollars. Now, ad networks are getting into the act. The latest example: Undertone Networks has introduced a unit that it calls the PageGrabber.
The new placement is similar to the home-page takeovers employed by many sites, but with a twist. When users log onto a site featuring the PageGrabber, that site’s content temporarily “crumples” and is yanked off the screen, revealing a large ad placement coupled with video.
Eventually, the Web site’s content returns to the screen in its original form.
The PageGrabber is exclusive to Undertone Publishers, which in aggregate reach close to 100 million unique users in the U.S., according to comScore.
Executives at the company see it as a point of differentiation in a still challenged display ad marketplace. “Bigger ad units drive better performance,” said Alan Schanzer, Undertone’s chief strategy officer.
