There is a time and a place for the all singing, all dancing rich media ads that literally jump from the page, spin around and attempt to “cut-through”but let’s not also forget the gentle art of contextual web advertising – the art of making advertising “a part of the page”, something to read, not something to block.

This isn’t solely about disguising ads to look like content. It is also about taking a broader view of the publisher’s audience, what’s missing from their user experience and delivering an “ad” at the right time and in the right place in a language and tone consistent with the content they are viewing.

Hate to use the same old examples but probably the best example of this strategy in effect is Google Adwords/Adsense. The ads are visually similar to the page content, they are (often) content matched and form a part of the site’s function (the ads are search results from a search engine).

Now this may not sound like rocket science but it is a fundamental oversight in many of today’s online media schedules to forget the nature of theuser experience. We are often too focused on demographics,impressions, share of voice etcto take the time out to lookat what the ad will “mean” to the end user. Is it contextual, is it timely and let’s face it, is it useful?

Have it in the back of your mind when you get that next brief that sometimes to blend is to stand out.