January 18, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The industry has seen its share of companies offering tools and services to help small-to-medium sized businesses optimize and monetize their Web sites. And although Internet advertising network MIVA's (miva.com) launch of MIVA Monetization Center on Wednesday might not seem novel at first, the company says its service is the first time a Web publisher will be able to come to one company and place Pay-Per-Click ads both alongside and within their content in order to monetize their Web sites.
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MIVA Monetization Center enables Web publishers to tap into new revenue streams, generating opportunities via three ad formats. The first format, content ads, are keyword or contextually targeted PPC ads displayed in fully customized layout beside site content. MIVA Inline ads are PPC ads that appear when users mouse over hyperlinked keywords within actual site content. Finally, search ads are PPC ads displayed in response to specific typed-in search queries using a Web site's search box.
Chrysi Philalithes, MIVA's VP of global marketing and communications says one of the main reasons the company decided to develop the MIVA MC program was due to customer demand.
"In the past, we've tended to work with larger partners and we've always had inquiries from smaller and medium sized publishers to place our ads on their site that we haven't necessarily been able to fulfill," says Philalithes. "So that's one reason we developed this, because we recognized that the demand was there. Also, we had all these products and we wanted to bring them together in a very simple and easy way for the publisher to be able to use."
Philathies says the self-service product truly is quite simple to use. Upon registration, customers can choose the level of customization for their ads, such as selecting the size, color or types of ads displayed, and a MIVA quality control team reviews the site. Once it it approved, the Web publisher is given a code and the ads go live on their site.
MIVA says there are many advantages to the service, including the benefit of being able to monetize actual site content. However, on top of that, Philathies believes a huge distinction between MIVA's product and everything else out there is the sheer level of customization available to the Web publisher.
"Customization is a really key feature for this product and happens in a number of ways. We have an ad-blocking feature where the publisher can say that they don't want a certain advertiser to be appearing on their site, so even if the advertiser is on the MIVA network, that Web publisher can block them," says Philathies. "Another way, specifically with the content ads, is we give Web publishers a choice with how to determine keywords. Either they use our contextual technology that goes over the site, pin-points keywords and pulls up ads that are relevant to those keywords or publishers can specify themselves the keywords they want to be used to trigger their ads."
Some other features of the service include the option to manage multiple URLs under one MIVA MC account, sophisticated reporting where daily, monthly, quarterly or annual reports can be created to provide up to date summaries of revenue generated, channels or sub accounts that enable Web publishers to develop groups of pages and track and compare revenue against these groups and a transparent earning's calculator where MIVA MC partners can see the exact share of revenue they are generating from the ads on their site.
