Kicking off an online revolution in traditional display advertising at Advertising Week in New York, AOL unveiled its display advertising initiative called Project Devil, which aims to transform online advertising by improvising on aesthetics, impact and interactivity of ads, NewsandTech.com reported yesterday.

Through this initiative, the company is aiming for a "fundamental redesign of the Web," which is incredibly "bold and ambitious," Jeff Levick, AOL's president of global advertising and strategy told MediaWeek.com. The company's two ad platforms namely- the company's mega ad network, Advertising.com and its popular ad-serving platform, AdTech will support growth of the Project Devil initiative.

Image Source: RealTimeAdvertisingWeek.com

The ad system has been designed and developed over a period of more than six months in association with Creative Consortium, a group of top innovators from leading digital and creative agencies across the industry who contributed their creative insights towards development of a new aesthetic standard for online advertising, according to the press release posted on MarketWatch.com.

The new display advertising format offers a large ad space segmented into interactive panels that offers advertisers an opportunity to customise different streams of functionality into an interface and helps streamline advertising focus by eliminating distractions and clutter in online advertising with one large visually-striking ad per page, according to the press release. Each unit is divided into three panels that can be customised with media streams and applications including video, slideshows, mapping, 3-D rotation, quizzes, polls, text messaging and other options, which make the ad fully interactive and eliminate the need for user navigation from the main page to explore features.

"Project Devil addresses the traditional limitations of online advertising head on to create ads that look better and work better for agencies and advertisers. It raises the standard for publishers and advertisers to improve the experience for consumers, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive," Tim Armstrong, AOL's chairman and CEO, stated in the press release.

The ad format went live on the company's Movefone.com and StyleList.com sites yesterday and will continue rolling out on its other websites as well, according to NewsandTech.com.

According to a pre-launch quantitative research conducted by comScore on 1,500 participants, display ads through Project Devil platform increase the overall user engagement by 18 percent, compared to the standard 300X250 banner ads, the press release stated. The study stated: "65% of respondents rated Devil ads as "easier to understand" and 77% felt the ad "gave more new information."