netactr

Snap is an interesting gadget for spicing up your web content and earning ad revenue in the process. After you integrate a 3-line java script into your home page - I just created a title-less text widget on my WordPress blog and copied the code over there - all your links will be “snappable”. Snap will insert an icon right after the link to indicate the availability of a “snapshot”. When a visitor hovers over the link (or clicks on the Snap icon), a popup magically appears showing the snapshot of the target site and an ad.

I like Snap’s business model for they basically share the ad real estate with you. Enter your AdSense pub id (more ad networks to come) and Snap will start serving ads alternating between their own account and yours. Instead of establishing a new business relationship (and sharing your SSN or Employer Id with yet another ad network), you stay with your existing ad provider and just use Snap’s technology to present ads in novel ways.

Summary: It took me the whole of 15 minutes to sign-up for a Snap account, configure my AdSense settings, and set up my blog with the Snap code. Kudos for ease-of-use. The relevance of ads is low though. I don’t believe Snap matches ads to content yet. This is something I’d look forward to in future versions. I would also ask for a more favorable ratio of my ads versus Snap’s – right now it looks like I am getting less than 20% of all Snap popup views.