Last week at Kontera’s Israel office, we celebrated Purim; a holiday observed in Israel with customs somewhat similar to those of Halloween in America.  We celebrated with a party at the office, that included a costume contest, food, music, and lots of laughs.

Take a look at our Purim Photo Album on Facebook, to see some of the people behind Kontera in their best (and weirdest) attire.

Freedom Ads offer Kontera’s large brand advertisers a unique way of capturing the consumers’ eye and imagination, while delivering record-high engagement, brand response rates, and CTRs.

Freedom Ad units are highly-relevant rich-media in-text ads that appear in the actual form of the product they advertise – thus bringing these products to life through an engaging out-of-the-box experience.

For example, when advertising its newest mobile phone and its video capabilities, Samsung chose to have the ad itself shaped like the actual mobile device, simulating its capability to stream live video coverage of the Winter Olympics. Consumers immediately experience the Samsung phone, its unique product design and video capabilities. The ad also conveys the Olympic experience and associates the Samsung brand with the Olympic spirit.

There are two types of Freedom Ads; the Product Freedom Unit, and the Brand Freedom Unit.

The Product Freedom Unit delivers an elegant, instantly recognizable visual depiction of the advertiser’s product, directly from within a highly relevant key phrase. Product Freedom units employ a clean design, and are ideal for product focused advertisers like Consumer Packaged Goods, Automotive, Apparel, Beauty, Consumer Electronics, and Retail.

The Brand Freedom Unit brings to life elements of the brand that are instantly recognizable, and it delivers a unique and holistic brand experience through tasteful interaction that engages, educates, and delights the consumer.

In a survey conducted among 15 brands and agency teams who launched campaigns using the new Freedom Ads, all of them replied that they would use the Freedom Unit again! This great advertiser reception is indicative of positive consumer results, and it is translating into a positive financial impact for Kontera’s publishers.

Other advertisers that have used the new Freedom Ads include FedEx, Adobe, the Republic of Ireland and Curel. See these campaigns and experience the Freedom Ads for yourself on our demonstration page.

You can also check out some of our additional Freedom Ads resources:

• The Official Kontera Press Release
• Freedom Ads Covered on MediaPost
• Download the PowerPoint presentation presented at iMedia Brand Summit
• See this and other Ad types in The Kontera Ad Gallery
• Watch the short video interview with Ammiel Kamon, Kontera’s EVP marketing, given at the iMedia Brand Summit about the future of in-text advertising

CPG stands for Consumer Packaged Goods, and can be anything that is packaged for sale at the consumer level. Going through your neighborhood supermarket, you see CPG products all around you –ranging from sun-screen and toothpaste, salad dressing, breakfast cereal, to music CDs, socks and coffee makers.

Then you might think to yourself – well, that’s interesting that CPG companies are interested in Kontera, but what does this mean for me?

It’s a good thing you’ve asked! CPG brands are amongst the most recognizable brands in the world, with some of the largest advertising budgets out there. Have you heard of Kellogg’s, Dove, Rice Krispies, Snapple, Arm & Hammer, and Welch’s?

Well, of course you have! And now you can increasingly see them using Kontera’s In-Text advertising solutions.

As a publisher, this means more big, reliable, household name advertising on your website. Big brands mean big business – with quality creative, higher CPC and better overall relevance and user engagement.
Check out some of our popular CPG ads on our new Gallery page »

What do CPG advertisers look for? In a word, quality.  If your site has quality content focused around lifestyle, recreation, fashion, family, shopping, home improvement, etc., then you may see some of our CPG ads come to life on your site.

In summary, advertisers and brands alike are increasingly recognizing the quality and effectiveness of In-Text advertising as a method to share the word about their CPG products.  So; eat your cereal, brush your teeth, freshen your underarms, and quench your thirst, with the confidence that your favorite brands are using Kontera’s In-Text ads to relay their brand messaging.

Read the latest CPG press release »

We are pleased to announce that we have updated the Kontera WordPress Plugin for WP v2.9.

Wordpress is one of the most widely-used platforms among our publishers. With the WP plugin, you can easily monetize your content in one click with no need for additional coding intervention.

The Kontera WordPress Plugin allows quick and easy implementation of In-Text Ads across all pages of your WP site without the need to add the code manually to each page.  With the WordPress Plugin, you can be up and running in minutes with Kontera ads on your site.

We hope you’ll find it useful.

Download Plugin for WordPress v2.9

For older versions of Wordpress, visit the Publisher Resources Page

We are endorsing UNICEF and the American Red Cross which are two organizations central to worldwide efforts matching resources with need.  Both organizations are active at the epicenter of the recent disaster that has left a mass of destruction and a country unfathomably changed forever.

We are running a focused campaign across our network of more than 15,000 publishers. The Haiti assistance campaign will be shown on pages that relate and discuss the Haiti disaster, and will target phrases and concepts having to do with aid, assistance, and relief for the people of Haiti.

If you’d like, you can make a direct donation right now:

In the words and spirit of Harace Mann, a 19th century US educator, “To pity distress is but human; [but] to relieve it is angelic.”

Mèsi (thank you in Haitian-Creole) for your support and we’ll be sure to keep you posted on our efforts.

• Not clutter your pages.
• Not trash your text.
• Bring your readers the relevancy that they deserve.
• Showcase brands that mean business.
• Keep the network clean in order to welcome big brands-meaning unique high paying advertisements.
• Maintain tight integration between your content and your users’ intent delivering record high CTR.
• Provide value to users and publishers.
• Serve fewer links per page while delivering strong campaign performance. (Also check out mediapost.com)
• Offer you a sustainable revenue stream that you can bank on.
• Bring you the premier In-Text Advertising experience.

Our unbeatable contextual technology delivers results without compromising on quality and your users.

It’s no secret that the holidays were in full force, with words like recipe, meal plan, menu, filling our dinner tables, bellies, and manifesting themselves right on our computer monitors.  With Rachel Ray, surpassing all other big names, it seems we even like our celebs to be all about the food.

Fitness, running , and workout plans are on the top of the list to try to cancel out the excessive eating.  And as we all know, drinking water and watching your nutrition intake will help jump start your diet.

In addition to eating and exercising, we can clearly see that people were traveling in style this holiday season with our travel segment of keywords getting quite a bit of attention.  Looks like chartered yachts, planes, trains, and trails were popular means to arrive at your dream destination–anything from the beach, national parks, campgrounds, hotels, hiking, and luxury cruises.

We will keep you posted on 2010’s top keywords, but with everyone back to their full productivity, be sure to focus on blackberry, iphone, and applications as these are winner keywords from what we’ve seen so far this month.

You may already know that the year you were born is considered the year of the rat, ox, or horse according to the ancient Chinese zodiac.  What you probably didn’t know yet, is that at Kontera, we’ve proclaimed 2010 as the year of relevancy.

What does this mean for our partners?  Well, it’s pretty simple, higher relevancy means that:

• Publishers don’t sell out their users to irrelevant ad exposure and are not hurting their users’ experience. Happy users mean increased traffic, time on site, and loyalty.
• Higher CTR – as you get paid by the click, more clicks means more money for your website
• Advertisers don’t have ads served to users who aren’t interested, thus getting high conversion on their campaign

Essentially everyone profits!

Relevancy is a mark at Kontera that we take very seriously.  Our relevancy efforts start at the “story-level” targeting where we interpret the meaning of the page then matching it with contextual ads that are the most relevant ones.

One measure of relevancy is in the form of a metric called CTR.  CTR or click through rate is a frequency ratio between the number of times an ad is viewed and the number of times it gets clicked on.  Experts agree that as the net becomes increasingly more built up, advertising campaigns that were formerly effective may not hold effectiveness.   In fact, recent statistics indicate that classic banner ads carry a mere .07% CTR rate bringing further understanding to the rise in the phrase “banner blindness”.  In contrast, ads on the Kontera network are characterized by starting click through rates that exceed 10% with some campaigns reaching upwards of 14% (!).

CTR is just one measure of a publisher’s ad performance, but is one of the most honest ways to gauge user satisfaction and interest.  Many publishers  find that after testing with other In-Text ad networks, their user experience suffers and many users desert their site due to the low relevancy threshold so be sure not to compromise when it comes to relevancy.

The next time you read your zodiac sign at your local Chinese restaurant, be sure to remember 2010 as not only the year of the tiger but also as Kontera’s commitment to relevancy.

1) Pursue a higher education: Ok while we aren’t actually signing up for college courses, we want to continue to educate ourselves on the needs of our publishers, and advertisers alike.  We know that through continued development of relationships, we can become better aligned with market trends as well as what you are looking for from us.

2) Diversify and expand: As your rich uncle may advise you, diversify, diversify, diversify.  This is exactly our thinking as we are constantly expanding our network of publishers,  ad offerings, while continuing to provide remarkable user experience.

3) Reduce life stress: Stress can contribute to poor health, and other negative effects on the body and mind.  At Kontera, we think that making money from your websites can be a breeze.  In 2010, let’s relax, feel good, and let your site work for you.

4) Keeping in touch with family and friends:  So while we probably aren’t immediate family or even long lost cousins, we want to continue to work towards keeping our partners and users completely informed about our latest news and developments.

5) Retain our edge:  A new look can always help spice things up.  In 2010, we will strive to enhance our products and services continue bringing you fresh and engaging content.

What kind of web-based resolutions are you planning to work towards this year?  From all of us at Kontera, we wish you a happy, healthy, and successful 2010.

We are gearing up for 2010 with exciting new projects and developments in store.  We hope that you enjoy a beautiful and peaceful holiday season together with close family and friends, however you may choose to celebrate.

We hope that if you haven’t already, you’ll check out our latest publisher promotion and of course follow our social networking profiles to stay up to date on the latest.

From all of us at Kontera, we wish you the best.