Influencers Ads Bring Social Networking to the Tired Ad Banner

So you know who Facebook's ad program lets people recommend/endorse various product to their friends? Wouldn't it be great if that were possible across the entire web instead of just within Facebook? Well, as a DR ad would scream, "Yes! Now you too can get social! And you don't need Facebook to so it! Call now!"

OK, so how does it all work? PopularMedia has introduced Influencer Ads. Similar to rich media banners from the likes of Pointroll, Influencer Ads are large format ads but with social networking functionality added.

If a person clicks on one of these banners, they have the opportunity to forward to/invite their friends to check the site out. When the invitee arrives, they are greeted with a welcome panel overlaid on the site with a message reminding them who invited them. The invitee is also prompted to invite others which, ideally, turns the whole thing into viral proliferation. Basically, the process is a form of word of mouth marketing.

Currently, Popular Media has teamed with The Rubicon Project to deliver the ad units across the network's reach to 320 million internet users. PopularMedia claims Rubicon's ad network optimization combined with Influencer ads "drives revenue lift ranging from 30-300% for the Rubicon Project's customers."

The release describes the process is further detail, "A series of social feedback loops (status updates, alerts, notifications and more) further encourage participants to engage in Influencer Ad campaigns. Once a campaign participant completes a marketing objective -- watching a video, taking a survey, filling out a form, purchasing a product, ordering a trial and so on -- the system automatically prompts each of those consumers to invite their friends to join the experience."

It could become the next greatest web annoyance or it could rejuvenate the tired ad banner by bringing life to it with social networking, viral and word of mouth elements. The expand-o-banner thing has been done many times before but Influencer Ads would appear to add another layer that, who knows, just might work.