The online business news site will adopt SFI's proprietary Ad3 (Ad Cube) platform and sell Ad3 units to its advertiser prospects as part of new rich media ad campaigns on its site. Ad3 projects will be executed by SFI's production services group based on each set of defined specifications. Viewable within the unit itself, an Ad3 unit can combine video, sound, scrolling headlines, 3D animation, down-loadable PDF documents, and more.

An official release informs that Flash-based rich media is now becoming nearly ubiquitous particularly with the spread and penetration of broadband -- and is taking on a much more active role in online advertising campaigns because of lead generation and brand enhancement benefits. SFI's Ad3 does not require a plug-in, and can be viewed by virtually anyone with standard browser-access to the Internet.

With its content accessed through simple, point and click actions, viewers tend to spend more time with Ad3 units than traditional online ads and remain on websites longer. Ad Cubes have already won several industry awards. With only a 25 KB typical footprint, Ad Cubes are delivered through a high-speed serving solution provided by BlueStreak, a strategic third-party ally on SFI's Ad3 team. Forbes.com will be able to accept advertising with up to 50 megabytes of information content. In some tests of the Ad3, interactivity has exceeded publisher norms by as much as 400% and the service brings new levels of detail for monitoring and tracking Ad3 campaigns. .