Today Adify, an ad network bought for $300 million by Cox Enterprises last year, announced it is adding expandable ad formats to its vertical networks (see samples here), making it easier to create, buy and sell the rich media units in an ad network setting. The ad format has six different interactivity units including expansion, video playback and keyword search. Adify tracks and reports performance on each unit.

The move is a step in the direction of content monetization... and quite possibly greater annoyance. Google's Adsense opened up to expandable ads back in March, but with more restrictions than Adify imposes. To prevent the ads from disrupting the reader's experience, Google barred ads that are activated by anything other than a click. Adify's ads can be activated on roll-over, or even automatically. Google also limited the expansion to double its original height and width; Adify's samples allow ad makers to go beyond that threshold.

It makes sense that any advertiser who invests in a rich-media expandable ad would want to place it across a network, and not just on a direct basis. Adify has over 200 niche networks and 12,000 mid- to long-tail sites, which could be eager for the ads that Adify says have click-through raites as high as 1% to 5%, compared to the .1 or .2% for standard banner ads, which means more money for the long-tail.  That's good, but it also means the "poorer" neighborhoods on the net could be littered with more intrusive ads.

EHarmony, Febreze and YMI are running campaigns using the new formats. Some of them ads are relatively cool, and undoubtedly distracting. Anyone hanging out in the long tail these days may soon have a harder time staying focused.