The new ads, illustrated here, were chosen in a competition that drew 36 entries from 24 companies. The winning entries come from AOL, Unicast, Google, Pictela, Genex and Microsoft.

The IAB, which administers a universal agreement on the size, shape and function of online ads, says it put out a call in September for new ads that would “encourage engagement with viewers on their terms and allow people to participate confidently with brands.” The new formats support such interactive elements as movie trailers and videos, games, quizzes and shopping modules, Ad Age says.

The new ad units are:

The Portrait, a 300×1050 canvas format with state-of-the-art plug-and-play functionality, which was developed by AOL.

The Slider, an overlay unit on the bottom of a page that is like a touchscreen, prompting users to slide the entire page over to unveil “a full branded experience,” which was developed by Unicast & Mediamind.

The Billboard, by Google/YouTube,which runs the full width of the page and has full close-ability.

The Filmstrip, from Microsoft, a 300×3000 canvas viewable through a 300×600 window and fully controlled by the viewer.

The Pushdown, a pushdown unit by Pictela with broad functionality via a visual toolbar.

The Sidekick Expandable, a format that launches from a standard ad and pushes page content leftward, revealing a large, functional canvas. It was developed by Unicast.

The IAB will evaluate the six new ad formats to see which ones gain a wider acceptance with online publishers, and those that do will become a part of IAB’s official roster.

The IAB also said today that 11 of the 18 current IAB standard ad units will be retired because they are no longer commonly bought and offered throughout the market.

There are 300 working content producers in AOL’s New York headquarters, backed by hundreds of freelancers and programmers at other sites, the NYT says. AOL owns such sites as TMZ, a celebrity news and gossip site; Politics Daily, which began in April and already has 3.6 million unique users a month; Engadget, a suite of consumer technology blogs; and FanHouse, a sports site. In the aggregate, the media properties at AOL have about 76 million unique visitors.

AOL has had several identities, beginning as perhaps the top Web portal in the dial-up days, and moving through a failed merger with Time Warner (Time Warner announced plans to spin the enterprise out on its own by the end of this year), a try as an entertainment channel and as a free e-mail provider.