I’ve been reading a lot lately about contextual media and there are several different ways in which it’s used. The main one I come across is in the form of advertising – where companies are able to use the content of an article or page to find the most relevant ad to serve up. The other way it’s used, which is becoming more popular, is by commercial websites to give their customers a richer experience on their site. This is the type of contextual media I am referring to in the title of this posting. Companies that develop this technology include Yahoo, Apture, Snap.com, and a few others. The idea is that while reading an article about a singer, for example, the singer’s name would be highlighted and when the customer hovers over the link a pop-up window appears with relevant information for that singer – it could be the Wikipedia entry, a video, an audio file, or any number of different types of content. Here is an example from the Apture website:

As you can see, the pop-up window displays additional relevant information but it also obscures other text on the page… some people find this type of interactivity annoying, others find it very helpful and interesting. It’s up to you to decide. Personally I find the interaction useful; especially after I found out that I could modify the settings to only display the pop-up “on click” rather than “on hover”.

There are obviously many uses for this type of interactivity – the example here could be used on any commercial website. This functionality can add to the “stickiness” factor. It allows companies to provide access to relevant information without clicking away to a different site. It will be interesting to see how application-based websites reap the benefit of this technology. One possible use could be contextual links to specific “help” topics which load video instructions or tutorials. I’m sure many other uses will be forthcoming. In the meantime, the technology is getting vetted by many vocal users (both pro and con) and is sure to be refined in the process.

- Mimi Knowles

Tags: contextual advertising, contextual media, usability

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Limina Perspective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.