On the internet the biggest battle for advertisers is catching a customer's attention and then holding it long enough for them to actually absorb the message of the advert and do something.

There are many reasons for this: Too many adverts, too little time, too many other distractions and, of course, the ability of those on the receiving end of advertising's entreaties to just click away on to another page.

Losing clicks--Such is the drive to attract advertising interest that on the net, as advertising budgets, grow, the challenge to create compelling advertising campaigns grows with them. The old means of flash banners or even old, tired static banners have failed to produce results and the more innovative means of producing videos and sustained multi-channel campaigns are both untried in terms of results and expensive to implement.

That left those wanting to advertise with very few options indeed. The net is clearly too good a medium to ignore but too inconsistent and difficult to get right. Until now, that is.

Peel away's unique appeal Peel ads are new, innovative and combine some characteristics that make them difficult to resist and stack the odds for them succeeding. Let's take things from the beginning: Peel ads employ one of the oldest tricks in the advertising book, human curiosity.

With the web's added interactivity peeking people's interest and getting them to actually click on an advert has relied on net adverts projecting either a very strident, insistent message or utilising the kind of obtrusive advertising that gives net visitors little choice but to click on an ad just to get away from it.

Neither of these approaches has worked very well which is where Peel ad's uniqueness has become one of its main strengths and the key to its success. By utilising innovative, Web 2.0 technology to create a ?peeled corner' effect on a website, Peel ads give a peek at what's hidden beneath without giving away the message.

The effect is captivating. Website visitors again and again find that their attention is magnetically drawn to whatever ?peeled corner' they see on a web page and itch to find what's underneath.

Visitors want to click--Because they have ?uncovered' the advert of their own accord by peeling back the web page, visitors to websites which employ Peel ad advertising become part of the website's ad employment formula and are then, as a result, much more likely to click on an ad.

The statistics bear this out. Comcast, a net watch company, released figures in 2006 that indicated that interactive advertising in which the web site visitor was ?drawn in' and required to take some action in order for the advertising to become effective, as opposed to being a passive receiver of some message, were more likely to succeed with as many as six out of every ten visitors.

The high percentage of visitors responding to Peel ads shows that the technology has huge potential and is, still in its infancy.

Easy to use--Despite the high degree of interactivity that a Peel ad imparts to a website the code required to make it happen is easy to use and lightweight enough not to affect web page loading times.

This is totally different to other online advertising methods that employ such web-heavy formats like Flash and interactive banners with a lot of animation. The Peel ad code can be seamlessly added to any website, it comes with a back-end interface that allows the webmaster to determine exactly how they use it and where it appears and has the added advantage that its use actually ads to the overall look of a website.

Makes websites interesting--Indeed, the fact that Peel ads present a thoroughly modern Web 2.0 feel actually helps revamp a web site's look and feel, making it seem very contemporary and with an added level of interactivity even if nothing else has been added to it.

This makes the very fact of using a means to earn extra money from a website one of the methods used to re-vamp it and freshen it up, which, in terms of web advertising, is a totally unique characteristic.

With such advantages to offer in terms of making a success out of an online advertising campaign webmasters really need only ask themselves if they have not yet employed peel ads on their site, what are they waiting for?

Copyright (c) 2007 Brenda Geier