While the in-text ads like the one IntelliTXT offers and Google appears to be offering look similar in format to Snap‘s preview bubbles, Paul Angles, Snap’s marketing director, points out that there are no ads in those little pop-ups.

These content previews have been met by the blogosphere with mixed reactions. Bloggers such as Michael Arrington and Guy Kawasaki both use Snap on their sites. Robert Scoble tried it out, but the flurry of negative comments about it may have moved him to quit.

"Yes, some people still don’t like us," said Angles. "But a lot more people tell us that they’re frustrated with sites that don’t have it."

Regardless, Snap is not the same as IntelliTXT. "Snap.com does not deliver in-content ads," he said. "Our preview bubbles give users valuable information about what a link points to. That’s it. No ads."

Angles was also sure to let us know that Snap would be releasing a major upgrade to its product at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next month and that Snap.com has offered Pay-Per-Action search since May of last year. 

IntelliTXT works by highlighting “commercial text links from keywords appearing within pages of online content.” Vibrant analyzes the content and then identifies the appropriate ad in relation to the text highlighted.

Currently, IntelliTXT highlights up to 5 words per page. By scanning the content, Vibrant is working to ensure that the ads are topical and contextually based. When a visitor mouses over the highlighted text, a small informational box appears with details of advertiser’s product or service.

A critique from a MarketingVoxNews.com article discusses whether or not IntelliTXT is new and effective. “The ‘new’ ad technology (actually implemented several times in the past six years by other companies) turns certain sponsored words green and allows an ad to pop up when the reader rolls over the appropriate text.”

The article goes on to say that the feedback for IntelliTXT has been “slightly, but negative, mostly concentrating on the fact that the ads wind up being completely irrelevant and distracting from the text.”

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