At the recent iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas, we announced our newest ad family: Freedom Ads.

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

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

The horrific earthquake in Haiti has touched us all, and we are working to help the people of Haiti who have been so affected. Kontera is donating our assets and technology, activating our publisher network and using our web reach to raise much needed relief funds.

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.

While many people use the New Year as grounds for setting new goals, we thought we’d put a Kontera spin on some of the most common new year’s resolutions.

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.

As the excitement of the season has arrived, we want to wish all of our publishers, advertisers, colleagues, employees, fans, and everyone else happy holidays.

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.