The Weather Channel Interactive Leads Industry in Adopting OPA New Ad Units

The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCi) is among the first in the online publishing community to offer advertisers a more impactful and innovative advertising product in accordance with Online Publishers Association (OPA) guidelines one month ahead of the July 1 OPA deadline.

The enhanced Windowshade advertising product offered on weather.com is TWCi’s version of the OPA’s “Pushdown” unit. This powerful addition to weather.com gives advertisers a large branding presence and exclusive ownership opportunity on the first page visited - either the TWCi homepage or Local Forecast page. The Windowshade pushes down page content rather than covering it, making it more user-friendly and more effective for advertisers. Nationwide Insurance is among the first advertisers to benefit from the Windowshade product from TWCi.

“We have seen great success to date with our original Windowshade product, both in terms of advertiser satisfaction and consumer ease-of-use,” said Sheila Buckley, vice president of national sales for TWCi. “Based on that positive feedback and with the OPA’s announcement as a catalyst, we wanted to offer the advertisers a larger palette, so we worked to enhance the Windowshade”

TWCi enhanced its original Windowshade product in accordance with the March 10 OPA announcement for creation of new interactive, display advertising units. The enhanced Windowshade is larger than the original version, automatically opening upon page load to an expanded view of 970 x 418 for seven seconds before collapsing into a smaller size of 970 x 66. Once collapsed, the ad allows for up to seven seconds of animation. Companioned with the 300x600 ad on the page, the Windowshade product offers advertisers exclusivity and an opportunity for a powerful branding message to a large audience.

According to the OPA, the new units are designed to inspire creativity, provide a greater share of voice, and enhance interactivity for consumers. A total of 35 OPA members have committed to offer at least one of the three proposed new units by July 1, 2009: the Pushdown; the XXL Box with page-turn functionality and video capability; and the Fixed Panel that scrolls with the page as a user scrolls. TWCi is evaluating the other proposed ad units and may offer additional products later in the year.

As one of the first to adopt this OPA standard, TWCi continues to demonstrate its industry-leader position by developing innovative products for advertisers that allow for national reach with local contextual relevance. For example, ADaptor ads allow advertisers to dynamically contextualize their messages based on the environment where ads serve. Unique to weather.com, ADaptor technology allows for real-time customization of ads based on weather, time and location of the consumer viewing the ad to enhance relevance and effectiveness.

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About The Weather Channel Interactive
The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCi) is the leading provider of broadband and wireless weather products including weather.com, The Weather Channel Desktop and The Weather Channel Mobile. weather.com, the Web site of The Weather Channel, is the ultimate source of weather on the Web helping users plan their lives by delivering timely current conditions, expert forecasts and relevant lifestyle content for 98,000 location IDs worldwide. TWCi reaches more than 38 million unique users online each month and is the most popular source of online weather, news and information according to Nielsen//NetRatings. TWCi also provides consumers with unique and customizable products such as Desktop Weather, toolbars, extensions, widgets, gadgets, and a full lineup of mobile services including downloads, messaging, mobile Web, and mobile video. Other TWCi sites include forGetaway.com, a vacation home rental site, Forecast Earth, a site dedicated to the discussion of climate change, and a series of international sites, including http://www.weather.co.uk/, http://www.meteo123.com/, http://www.wetter123.com/, http://www.canaldotempo.com/ and www.weather.com/espanol.

For more information on The Weather Channel Companies, including press releases, images, executive information and backgrounders please visit www.weather.com/press.