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AdCamo is a new ad network that monetizes the backgrounds of Web pages. It’s not an entirely new advertising format – you’ve probably seen these types of ads on top trafficked sites like MySpace – but it’s the first ad network we know of that will let smaller publishers monetize their sites with this type of advertising.
Background ads aren’t clickable – they’re much more about branding. On MySpace, I’ve seen ads mostly for movie releases and TV shows, where the call to action isn’t web-based. Thus, this ad format has typically been reserved for big brands with big budgets, and most of the spend has gone to big web sites. AdCamo wants to change this by bringing the format to a network where advertisers can make buys across multiple small-to-mid sized sites.
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That said, the ad format could be considered fairly intrusive and probably isn’t going to win many fans in the aesthetically-conscious crowd. Beyond that, Rafe Needleman of Webware is concerned that the format could actually confuse users, writing, “These background ads can really junk up a Web page and can confuse the reader about which parts of the site are content and which are advertiser-provided.”