Design your own interactive ads, start-up says

Start-up Tumri is set to launch on Monday a service that helps Web publishers put interactive ads on their sites.

The ads are designed to let users search for products, change image content, browse by category with drop-down menus, and even make a purchase, Tumri said.

The Mountain View, Calif., company, founded in 2004, said its Tumri Publisher Portal will enable publishers to create AdPods, units in which they select an ad's format, size, product category, merchant price and keywords. They then get a share of the revenue generated by either clicks or orders.

For example, the blog site Everything Yoga has a Tumri AdPod on its front page that allows people to click on the ad to see products related to fitness and yoga, such as shoes, sports clothes and yoga mats. Users can click through to the merchant site or to make a purchase.

The Tumri Publisher Portal enables publishers to view reports to change the criteria based on how well visitors are responding and interacting with the AdPods.

The AdPods are not meant to be an alternative to Google's AdSense contextually targeted ads, but rather to complement them. Web sites can feature both types of ads, Tumri CEO Hari Menon said.

Google is reportedly working on an interactive-ad platform of its own. The search giant has been testing so-called gadget ads that let advertisers use Flash animation, video, real-time feeds and transaction functionalities instead of standard static display ads, according to Online Media Daily.

The name "Tumri" is based on the Sanskrit word for a type of romantic song set to classical Indian music.

[bobbydi]

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I have been to thousands of web sites that all have the features of this ONE business. Why did CNET ignore the other thousands of web sites to promote is ONE business?