Uses & Benefits of Rich Media In Ad Campaigns

Rich media is the use of interactivity or multimedia to give an enhanced experience to a web user. When it's used in advertising, it's done so to attract attention, stand out among the clutter of ads and copy, or shake someone out of their "banner blindness," a term that's been used to describe the general ignoring of all banner ads. Although we're in a time when a lot of online marketing buzz focuses on simple text ads or search engine listings, rich media is still a sound piece of the Internet advertising puzzle.

Take a look at Weather.com and you'll see an ad for Hertz in which some poor soul is pushing his lousy rental car. Go to Washingtonpost.com to play an interactive "Sink the Putt" game from Orbitz. Both of these are perfect examples of animated and interactive rich media ads.

From these examples we see that it is beneficial to catch the attention of site visitors. Simply using a rich media flash animation advertisement may not only help to grab the interest of a user, but may also lead to a click and/or sale. Basic ads, on the other hand, may get lost in the pack.

It doesn't take an Internet marketing genius to realize that these ads certainly are "rich." They are powerful, effective and require a lot of money to produce. But from a technical viewpoint, rich media ads are simply ads employing advanced animation, video, sound, and sometimes interactive technologies.

Rich media ads go above and beyond the normal GIF image files used for most banner ads and include Flash, Shockwave, pull-down menus, streaming video and audio, search boxes, applets, and other various types of special effects.

Give Me the Goods

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, 51 million Americans now connect to the Internet via broadband. Broadband is necessary for the downloads of large video and music digital files. Moreover, Jupiter Research predicts that by 2008, advertisers will spend $7.2 billion for online ads, 39 percent of that figure on rich media. Compare this to 2003 when $3.1 billion was spent on online ads with a mere 11 percent going to rich media. So, if you have the money, why not invest in rich media advertising?

What makes rich media so enviable, besides the fact that it's quite entertaining, is that it can deliver more detailed instant feedback to the advertiser than just that someone clicked: how long a user viewed the ad, how s/he interacted with the ad, and what s/he clicked on the ad. For this reason, rich media is becoming the darling of the branding world. A recent DoubleClick survey, in fact, found that rich media generates both higher brand recognition and sales activity than static online ads.

Dynamic Logic, a leading market research company, supports these findings, as well. It conducted a study in which the average lift in message association for GIF/JPG's was 21 percent, Flash/HTML was 37 percent, and rich media came in with 44 percent on average. In other words, these findings essentially reinforce the theory that using rich media raises the odds of a consumer linking a specific brand to a specific message. These results were drawn from over 320 online ad campaigns.

Middle Ground

Although rich media has shown better results with branding and awareness, there is still one potential deterrent when it comes to rich media: the creation cost. Text links cost next to nothing produce (unless you want to hire a copywriter). Search engine sponsored listings fall into this category. Static or plain animated banner ads can cost between $200 - $750 each, depending on who's producing them and the market you're in. Bear in mind that you'll probably want a few different versions of a banner to test and you'll need different sizes, depending upon the placement.

With rich media, the in's and out's of production can really add up quickly. From all kinds of complex animations, looping, audio and video, and programming code not to mention that all this may need to be adjusted for different web site publishers sites, it's not to hard to see how rich media may not be for every budget.
The Cons?

As with any positives there are negatives. Many people would agree that advertisements, even in their simplest forms, can be annoying and/or intrusive. Some Internet users don't appreciate the floating ads obstructing their views. Others are bothered when they can't find the "close" button to a full page overlay. "No one feels the science has been well developed yet, by any means," stated Eyeblaster's Paul Kadin to USA Today. Eyeblaster is a supplier of rich media technology. "The fine line is not to make it annoying or intrusive."

Furthermore, because rich media ads utilize such intricate technologies they are sometimes only properly viewed on computers with the latest technologies installed. For instance, some ads require plug-ins from Macromedia. Without enough RAM some viewers may not even have access to these enhanced ads, and it's doubtful that anyone will purchase a new computer just to see rich media ads.

And for those that do have the opportunity to take a peek, many do not want to download small plug-ins nor wait for the files to start running. It's all about easy accessibility.

Final Thoughts

If your ad budget is large enough and you have ample time, then employing rich media technology is definitely worth testing out, especially if your product is one that could benefit from a "show and tell" or the "cool factor."

Rich media advertisements are intriguing. They can put a smile on the faces of your potential customers. Don't believe us? Check out some of the finalist ads from last year's Eyeblaster Awards (link below). If smiles turn to profit, the sweeter it is.

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fr.: WebAdvantage eMarketing Newsletter