Tuesday morning, WashingtonPost.com rolled out a new hyperlink technology, powered by tech start-up Apture, for two of its blogs: The Fix and Celebritology. When a reader puts the mouse cursor over a link, an article, photo, or video will pop-up on the same page without clicking.

This technology not only keeps readers on WaPo's site, but also generates new advertising inventory as advertisers demand proof of engagement instead of simple page views. Also, each pop-up window contains a banner ad.

"We want to give people the ability to find related content that doesn't necessarily take you to another page," Jim Brady, the site's executive editor, said. "This allows them to keep our articles in focus as opposed to sending them to a wholly different page that requires a back-button functionality."

Problems that WaPo had to deal with were avoiding Apture links to content that might pose copyright issues and experimenting with the windows that would pop up. They decided that a "delayed hover" of the cursor instead of a mouse click, which would launch the pop-up.

"Some people don't like the action on rollover," Brady remarked. "It's something we're going to look at to see the impact on our readers. God knows they're not shy about telling us what they think of new features."

If the pop ups are well-received, WaPo plans on implementing them on all the blogs and most of the articles.

Source: Portfolio.com