Inline text links are ads that appear as a brief text description in a box with a clear call-to-action. These ads only appear when the mouse pointer hovers over certain words that are relevant to the webpage’s content. The sole purpose of inline text links is to create user curiosity based on a detailed description and a link to partner sites.

Inline text links are great when you want to save space on your webpage; they are similar to newspaper headlines that raise interest on a distinctive topic. With the possibility of frequent format changes, spendings on the creation of graphical ad formats are unnecessary; thus, text links provide a pure and effective technique to advertise across the internet.

In the early days of the Web, everything was text-based – there were no graphics. In today’s internet economy, this paradigm is changing. As the Web becomes more and more graphical, it is important to emerge from the latest popular advertising trend and take a step back and employ simple text advertising.

Many sites offer text-based ads, which typically consist of one or two lines of text and a link. Users seem more likely to click on text ads when they appear within content, rather than at the top of a page in a banner-sized box. Plus, with text ads, an advertiser’s message will always be displayed directly on a webpage.

As the workhorse of web advertising, text ads come in various shapes and sizes, including leaderboards, skyscrapers and other industry-standard sizes. Text ads are loaded more quickly, hence allowing you to present your message to your viewers more effectively.

It’s a tired cliché, but a picture, indeed, is worth a thousand words, especially in online graphical banner advertisements. It is at the advertiser’s discretion to present anything eye-catching enough in order to draw visitors’ attention, including logos and photos of various sizes. These ads complement the publisher pages aesthetically and blend in contextually.

As users click on a graphical banner, they should be redirected to a page where they can find more information about the product/service, as well as the action they would like the users to take (i.e. fill out a form, purchase a product, etc). Graphical banners allow you present noticeably appealing ads, resulting in a higher viewer retention rate than radio or television ads.

Rich media banners provide you with a way to present additional content and interaction within traditional ad sizes. With the technologies now available, rich media banners offer a great deal of flexibility and creative latitude in banner design.

Over the past few years, rich media has proven to be extremely effective and the click-through rates is amongst the highest in the online advertising industry. Rich media is usually designed in Flash because of its powerful capabilities; it can combine quality graphics with sound and incredible animation, allowing the advertiser to catch the attention of its users. Click or mouse-over actions creates more functionality and ensures a high click-through ratio. Java, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash, and moving GIF files can all be used with rich media banners.

Advertisers can also dynamically insert a pre-roll video ad to any video without any Flash programming. Upon placing the ad code on a publisher site containing videos, the code will automatically detect the videos and place ads within the videos.

Pop-unders is a form of online advertising on the Internet which emerged from the concept of pop-ups. This form of advertising is deemed acceptable and least intrusive, as it will not immediately interrupt the user, nor will it take the user’s attention away from the publisher’s site. It gives advertisers a good opportunity to brand their products and provide users with sufficient product information.

When a user visits a website with a pop-under advertisement, the pop-under will open in a new browser window hidden below the user’s current browser, usually unnoticed. When the user is finished with the publisher’s site and closes their current browser, they will then be presented with the pop-under advertisement, creating a less disruptive approach to online advertising.

Click here to see a sample of a pop-under ad on your task bar

Experienced web users tend to close pop-up windows immediately without looking at them. Moreover, pop-up blockers prevent the ads from appearing at all. Interstitial ads attempt to solve this problem because they are prominent and hard to miss.

Interstitial ads automatically scroll down simultaneously as a user scrolls down a webpage. If you have a dedicated audience that won’t let a bit of obnoxiousness stand in their way of enjoying a site, interstitial ads can be exploited as one of the most highest-paying creatives.

XML feeds is a type of paid inclusion that is intended to provide users with more information. It seeks to return more search results to users through partnering with other search engine providers. They are written in simplified HTML code, in which they are fed and indexed in search engines to be delivered for interpretation and maximum keyword exposure.