• by Ken Liebeskind , May 28, 2002

CMP Media TechWeb, a suite of sites from CMP Media, publisher of InfoWeek, Internet Week, and other tech magazines, has developed a new online ad format that helps advertisers reach surfers more interested in reading content than advertising. DataPop installs a clickable icon atop a banner that when clicked allows surfers to receive email from the advertiser. Surfers can continue reading content without stopping to read advertising material.

“It provides a service for surfers who won’t click on an ad and gives advertisers the opportunity to save a banner for later action,” says Michael Grover, CMP Media Tech Web’s director of marketing.

“At content-oriented sites, people come for the articles and most want to finish the arti-cles, so it’s less likely they’ll click. With DataPop, they can continue reading and still get information from the advertiser.”

The icons are 18 pixels high. The email that gets sent is a web page with a maximum width of 360 pixels that can be any length. No changes to the banner need to be made as the DataPop is a separate image.

DataPop was launched recently on seven company sites: TechWeb.com, InformationWeek.com, NetworkComputing.com, InternetWeek.com, and the CMP TechWeb Financial Technology Network sites Bank Systems & Technology, Insurance & Technology, and Wall Street & Technology. The sites get about 4 million page views per week.

Grover says eight advertisers are using DataPop so far, including AT&T, Compaq, and RLX Technology. Kevin Bohren, vice president of marketing for RLX, a computer server manufacturer in Houston, says DataPop produced substantial results, with a 5 to 10 percent jump in web traffic.

Advertisers pay for DataPop on a performance basis. The first 100 emails cost $7 each, with no charge after that. This is a charter rate, according to Grover, so it could change.

Rudi Grahn, a Jupiter MediaMetrix analyst, lauds DataPop because it “gives users more control. They understand users are there for a spe-cific purpose, and it gives consumers the option of prioritizing their time.”

He says Clickvu developed a similar delayed interaction format, where a banner opened a second window. But no other format uses the same mechanism as DataPop, he says.

While the DataPop format seems valuable, Grahn wonders how effec-tive it will really be. “There aren’t a lot of conversions that are missed because a person doesn’t want to go there, but maybe there’s enough so they can sway it,” he says. In other words, maybe there are enough surfers who will be converted after requesting the email to make these efforts valuable.