Want to create an ad experience that captures consumers' eyes and imagination? Take a look at an in-text solution that can help viscerally connect with consumers and build on existing product and brand awareness.

Banner ads are universally ignored by consumers, and they offer little hope to advertisers as well. Click-through rates for display units are so low that they're often an inside joke among marketers. How then does a marketer achieve branding goals online?

At the iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas, Nev., Kontera discussed its in-text advertising solution for reaching and engaging qualified consumers across the web.

Kontera works with 15,000 websites in its network, reaching more than 120 million unique users per month. Kontera's unique technology analyzes pages across its network of publishers in real time and understands actual article concepts, not just keywords. Through this technology, Kontera is able to draw from its large inventory of ads and link the most relevant ads to the top concepts within the content.

When users click on a linked keyword or phrase, they'll open one of Kontera's dynamic ad units. Kontera's expandable units let a consumer click for more information, expanding the unit into a larger, engaging demonstration of the product. Meanwhile, Kontera's freedom ad units are designed to create a product placement feel, offering a subtle and elegant creative execution that is highly relevant to an article's content.

Boosting click-throughs
When Quaker Oatmeal was experiencing an 18-month sales decline, the brand needed something to reinvigorate the product and get consumers excited about oatmeal again. Working with its agency, OMD Chicago, the brand launched an online campaign complete with banners, rich media units, video ads, and paid search listings.

The main goals of Quaker's campaign were to impact and engage consumers in a relevant environment, something that Kontera's in-text advertisements helped the brand accomplish. Quaker used an expandable ad unit to highlight the many different uses of oatmeal, with the ad appearing on health websites linked to keywords such as "strawberry."

Quaker's results with the Kontera units were through the roof -- consumers spent almost 12 seconds on the expandable unit when it was linked to the keyword "vanilla yogurt." On top of that, the Kontera units had the highest CTRs across Quaker's entire campaign, with some units achieving CTRs as high as 15.6 percent.

An elegant brand experience
Kontera's offerings aren't limited to banner-like creative either. In a campaign that promoted both a new Samsung Phone and the Winter Olympics, Kontera developed an in-text unit that launched a video that simulated the phone's capability to stream Olympic coverage live. It was an instantly recognizable visual communication that let consumers experience what the phone does.

Rich Cherecwich is deputy editor, iMedia Connection.