Social networking news site Mashable and MIT's Adverlab are both excited about SpongeCell's new bookmarkable banner ads. Perhaps you and your clients will be, too. These screengrabs spell out the functionality these ads are capable of. Top left is the native state, other panels are the respective actions available to the viewer.

SpongeCell seems primarily geared toward event-oriented initiatives. The example shown is for a concert event; we might also use this for a new product trial event, or a limited-time retail event (I wish AT&T was using something like this to schedule appointments to purchase the 3G iPhone). A glance at the success stories listed on their site shows two musical acts and one film premiere. This new bookmarkable rich-media banner ad hasn't been available long enough to have success stories yet. But it's easy to see the potential for brands and marketers who want to foster community and make messaging that's more useful.

At this stage, SpongeCell rich-media ads are compatible with Facebook and MySpace, Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal and Yahoo!. Among the actions you can make available to the user are email and SMS reminders, invite friends, RSVP, subscriptions (RSS feeds, podcasts, newsletters), comments and more (see "buy tickets" in the screengrabs above).

This new bookmarkable banner is part of their SpongeCell's Add to Life suite of offerings. Visit SpongeCell for more information.