The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its Image-Based Advertising Working Group just released the In-Image Advertising Primer, providing marketers with an overview of this type of ad, which is often used in native advertising campaigns.

This is essentially a follow-up to the Native Advertising Playbook the bureau released a few months ago.

In-image ads are content-relevant ads inserted within editorial images on the web. These can include things like product information overlaid on still photos or videos or rich media that appears when users hover over ads.

The In-Image ad primer walks readers through five case studies with major brand advertisers Activision, Cat’s Pride, Garnier, Mazda and the Northwest Dealer Group (NDG). It also highlights research showing that these types of campaigns generate an average rise of 37% in brand lift for awareness.

IAB Head of Brand Initiatives Peter Minnium said, “Placing advertising in the viewer’s activity stream is a powerful way to reach audiences and in-image advertising has the potential to do this in an effective and elegant manner. In particular, it can bring a new level of relevancy by leveraging the power of the visual web for marketers – something that has not been done well at scale to date.”

“This paper is an essential first step toward informing brands about how they can harness the power of images,” said Tony Winders, Senior Vice President, Marketing at GumGum and chair of the IAB Image-Based Advertising Working Group. “Consumers are clearly drawn to visual content and research shows they are more likely to view and engage with ads when they are overlaid on that content. In-image advertising has proven its ability to capitalize on these facts – in turn benefitting marketers that incorporate it into their campaign strategies.”

You can find the paper here.

Image via IAB