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Rich Media has changed the way advertisement works online. More and more advertisers are using rich media to create cool interactive ads to encourage product sales through online advertising.
Rich media offers unprecedented capabilities for measuring consumer interactions with the ad, such as the rate and time of interactions, video rolls and custom events. When interactivity and especially video are added to the mix, the impact on brand metric can be tremendous.
Mainstream advertisers who spend nearly $60 Billion on television world wide are now paying attention to online video advertising. These new features in online ads – Sound, Video, Animation, Interactivity, Product Demos, Games – clearly elevated the medium beyond strict direct response to a creative vehicle capable of brand impact.
Rich media ads also come in many shapes, sizes and feature implementations. To simplify
these, DoubleClick describes most rich media executions by the following standard formats:
- In-page: standard IAB ad unit shapes that may include advanced rich media functionality,
such as embedded games, animation, video, registration forms or interactive marketing
brochures, and which may allow for larger file sizes through polite download technology
- Expandable: similar to in-page units, but they expand in size when a user moves his
mouse over the ad or clicks to interact with it. Some publishers are experimenting with
ads that automatically expand when the page loads, then retract after a small delay.
These ads are sometimes called "push downs" or "server-initiated expandables"
- Floating: ads that appear as a layer on top of the user’s current page; these are typically
free-form ads that can move across the page in a variety of shapes and sizes and which
may "resolve" into an in-page ad on the same page or a smaller floating "reminder" ad
unit which continues to float above the page
- Pop-ups: ads that launch a new smaller browser window that appears above the open
page (possibly not long for this world due to the advancement of "pop-up blockers")
- Transitionals: also known as "between-page ads" or "interstitials," these ads appears
between one page and another as a user clicks through a site
- Video Ads: Online video advertising online is
likely to surge. Presently, online video takes the form primarily of in-banner video units,
typically user-initiated clips inside standard ad sizes, and in-stream pre-roll spots in
downloadable or streaming video content clips.
Measuring Success
Among the great appeals of rich media for advertisers is the detailed extent to which advertisers
can track user interactions with the ads. Rich media tracking features far exceed what
is possible from standard online advertising, not to mention traditional broadcast and print
advertising.
Common Rich Media Advertising Metrics
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Display time: how long on average the ads were displayed on the web page. By comparing
sites within the media schedule, advertisers can get a sense of which types of
sites offer shorter or longer ad exposure times
- Interaction rate: the percentage of the audience that engages with the ad unit. The lowest
common denominator for "interaction" is a mouse-over, some portion of which may
be incidental, so advertisers should be sure to also specify actions they can track that
indicate true user engagement, such as ad expansion or otherwise intentional involvement
with the ad content
- Interaction time: the amount of time users spend engaging with the ad. This is a crucial
metric for understanding how successful ads are at engaging consumers, particularly
for ads designed to draw users in with detailed features, such as multiple page
brochure-type ads or games
- Expansion rate: for expandable ads, the rate at which viewers exposed to the ads cause
them to expand. Where expansion is triggered with a mouse-over, marketers should
closely watch the "close" function and/or interaction time to get a sense of what portion
of those expansions are accidental and unwanted by consumers
- Video views and completions*: the start and finish rate for video ads. Since in-banner
video ads may be either initiated by user interaction (e.g., "click play") or by default upon
page load, starts and completions can provide important information on levels of user
interest
- Average video view time*: another way to gauge the popularity of video ads with viewers
is to compare the average length of play with the total length of the ad
- Video pauses, rewinds, mutes*: some rich media tracking systems also enable advertisers
to track how often users take further actions with video ads, such as these
- Exit links: the ability to present and track multiple click-through destinations in a single
ad unit
- Custom events: virtually any other action users may take on a rich media ad – screens
of copy within the ad viewed, ad content printed, form fields completed and much more – can be tracked if the ad is designed to track those events.
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