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It was a few months ago that we featured GapAd, a service for bloggers to monetize their sites by displaying ads when visitors leave. Now in Finland, Kiosked aims to help bloggers and publishers better monetize their content — effectively turning online images into a consumer-friendly marketplace. Kiosked was founded by Micke Paqvalén as an alternative to traditional banner advertising. According to Google, click-through rates for banner ads are falling in double figures, and are commonly viewed as an irritation rather than compelling advertisements. Kiosked, on the other hand, is an in-image advertising platform. Bloggers and publishers begin by choosing a free high-quality image from the Kiosked Image Bank and embedding it on their site. Kiosked then automatically tags the image with relevant advert links. For example, a travel blogger writing about London can select an image of Big Ben and place it on their site. This image will be tagged with relevant links to websites offering flights to London, or hotels and accommodation near Big Ben, for example. Then, anyone viewing the image on the site can click the small “K” icon in the bottom left hand corner of the image to display all the links the image has been tagged with. Bloggers and publishers earn sales commissions on all purchases made, while additional features enable viewers to save advertised products and services in a wish-list and share them with friends. Through a partnership with Web of Trust — a worldwide community of over 20 million web users who rate the reliability of websites — Kiosked images will only appear on trustworthy websites. The video below explains Kiosked in more detail: According to Kiosked, their click-through rates are up to 25 times higher than traditional display ads, with higher conversion to sales, suggesting this model has potential to challenge traditional banner ads. Inspiration here for bloggers and advertisers alike? Spotted by: Saku