The latest online advertising opportunity… print

The rise of online advertising has been seen by some as a threat to print ads, but now a US company may have identified a way to make print ads pay, according to Online Media Daily.

You see, apparently each year people in the US print out 61 billion pages from the web. Often those pages will contain ads, but because of the awkward fit of web pages to printers they are often lost or mangled in the printing process.

Denver company Format Dynamics sees opportunity in that phenomenon, and is attempting to tap it by providing a service that inserts ads into web page printouts. Web page owners can either use the service to ensure web-based ads print out cleanly or insert entirely new ads, potentially generating a whole new revenue stream for the company – and a tidy earner for Format Dynamics.

More than 70 newspapers in the US have already signed up to the service, while Format Dynamics itself has raised $US4.4 million in first-round venture capital to further develop its business.

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