SITE: Make Room for Portals

Portals like MSN and Yahoo are winning ad dollars with custom marketing solutions. They are showing that creativity, technology, content and customer insight is needed to attract and win major advertising deals with big brands. These portals are pitching their ideas directly to the clients and involving their agencies to create unique branding experiences.

One key advantage the portals have is that they have more flexibility to develop advertorials and create hybrid content. Since the portals don't have traditional editorial overseers, as do the large sites and networks that are run by traditional publishing companies, they can give agencies and brands more leverage in getting and creating content space to wrap around the brand.

Now that large marketers are using the Internet ad space for branding purposes, other sites hope that marketers will also look beyond the portals for ad opportunities. Other large sites and networks can provide aggregated audiences with the same unique, creative approaches and the tools to deliver a branding experience.