Friday, May 9, 2008

Introducing the 'Printerstitial'

Want yet another digital ad format? No ... well, stop reading. If the answer is yes, you're in luck!

Introducing the 'Printerstitial', a new technology and ad placement developed by US firm Format Dynamics.

"Format Dynamics has perhaps invented a whole new ad category by developing a service that inserts ads into printouts of Web pages, combining the "advantages of online ads with the power of traditional print ads."

From MediaPost: "Format Dynamics estimates that U.S. consumers print 61 billion Web pages annually"

61 billion! That's a helluva lot of pages.

Mediapost again: "When consumers make printouts from Web pages enabled with Format Dynamics' "CleanPrint," the technology dynamically reformats the pages to be more appealing to both consumers and advertisers--including text, photos, charts and ads--while completely eliminating such Web-centric features as navigation bars. The PrinterStitials can either be print-friendly versions of ads already on the Web page or completely separate "print ads."

So what this essentially means is the technology cleans up printed html pages to be easier for users to read and ideally file, and easier for advertisers to include stronger ad executions.

It makes sense. If you print out a recipe (like I do often) from Taste like this - http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/6438/chocolate+mousse+cake - no ad appears on the printed page. Surely this has a value that the publisher could take to market to monetise? Same deal for Recipe Finder. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume both of these properties have thousands of pages printed a day of their content.

Sometimes ads do appear on the printed page. Lets say I print an article out from ninemsn Health about Nutrition - http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=105204 - it will print out the frame on the leaderboard that was active when the print job processed. Not the best use of the space.

Fairfax have it nailed at the moment. Their print friendly versions have static gifs which carry the info they need to carry. http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2008/05/09/1210131209141.html

It would be very interesting to get an idea of how many pages are printed by Australians from web content ... and will be also interesting to see how the major publishers approach this. It's an interesting space - digital moving into traditional print ... but with technology and insights that could (essentially) create ads relevant to the users age, location and online habits.

Full article - http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=82093

3 comments:

Glenn Rogers said...

Hey Shep, Taste do offer ads on the recipes printouts, and you're right, they do plenty of numbers. It's a great branding opp, also a good opp for in-store vouchers.

Ben Shepherd said...

hi mate - i can't find what you mean. the 'print' button just issues a printer popup from what i can find. do you have an example?

Glenn Rogers said...

No worries, emailed you an example.