'Net Features : rich media

Digital Advertisers Want More Rich Media and Less Hassle

Michael Garrity — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:00:00 GMT

For most Internet advertisers, rich media ads represent the future of the industry, particularly when it comes to mobile advertising.

Now we have the numbers to prove it, as a recent survey by the multi-screen interactive platform provider Jivox found that rich meda advertisements are in high demand, although many ad agencies worry about the complex technical requirements of delivering them across screens.

The survey, which includes responses from 100 employees from “leading ad agencies” in a variety of job roles (from media buyers/planners to creative to account management), found that over half (51 percent) of agencies have reported an increased in client demand for dynamic rich media ads. In addition, another 20 percent said they expect that demand to rise this year.

Jivox pointed to two primary reasons for the growing demand. The first is rise of standardized ad formats, such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Rising Stars ad units. The other is a steep decline in interest about static ads, which Forrester noted last October had dropped by nearly 45 percent in just two years.

However, despite their excitement and interest in rich media, these same advertising professionals (or 88 percent of them, at least) are finding the ads to be a “very stressful process.” Plus, another 42 percent said that running the ads across multiple screens was a “painful process.” 15 percent didn’t even bother to try. This is significant because the ability to run rich media ads on a variety of devices is becoming more and more important, since 69 percent of all Internet users now access the Web on mobile devices, so if these digital ads don’t render properly, it will have a significantly negative effect on impressions and overall campaign returns on investment (ROI).

“The influx of mobile devices has created new challenges and frustrations for advertisers,” said Jivox CEO Diaz Nesamoney. “These findings show that we need to move to the next generation of ad platforms that are adaptive, real-time and more efficient – only then can we alleviate some of the stress that traditional rich media causes.”

The report also found that 66 percent of respondents would recommend more rich media campaigns if production times and costs were cut to half of what they are now, and of the five percent that aren’t running rich media campaigns, half of them said it is because they’re to expensive and cumbersome. In fact, 31 percent said they “almost always” experience delays due to last minute creative changes or ad production, while 62 percent said they sometimes experience delays.

So, it would seem that widespread rich media ad adoption still isn’t here just yet, but as they become increasingly user-friendly and less expensive, as well as more easily adaptable for mobile devices, expect to see them more and more.

The Rich Get Richer: A Guide to Interactive Visual Content

Linc Wonham — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Over the past couple of years, there have been major shifts in consumer purchasing patterns. New technology has made the buying experience more interactive more often.

With more touch-points come more opportunities to create an engaging experience with the consumer, but it also means there are more pieces to take into account. Consumers expect to be able to engage with a brand consistently through every channel, all the time. They want to be able to shop online via computer, smartphone, tablet, as well as in-store, and have a universal experience.

How do you create engaging content?
With all of these moving pieces, how do you keep your brand consistent across all channels while keeping up with the continuously evolving consumer? By keeping them engaged no matter what channel they’re using.

Utilizing rich media content such as photography, 360-degree views of the product, and online video are ideal ways to achieve consumer interaction. On average, consumers spend 48 seconds on a website with only text. But add video to the mix and the consumer spends up to five minutes and 50 seconds – making video more than five times more effective than text.

Having a consumer spend more time on your site is fantastic, but the ultimate goal is conversion. When selling products online, it’s important that the consumer feels comfortable and confident the product is what they are looking for.

Providing images, more views, demo videos, and different color options is one way to increase the consumer’s confidence and decrease the number of returns. Take Zappos, for instance: By using video demos of items on product pages, the online retailer was able to increase sales by 6 to 30 percent.

Why is consistency important?
Since consumers aren’t just making online purchases from a computer anymore, it’s important to ensure that creative content is compatible and consistent from mobile devices, tablets and laptops. Over the last three years, mobile video traffic has increased 5,000 percent, providing great opportunity for online retailers to remain competitive with compelling visual content.

One best practice for creating engaging visual content is to shoot the products once and use that content across several platforms. For that reason, online retailers should consider creative agencies that have the capability to shoot high-quality content and repurpose it for multiple deliverables including still images, 360-degree product views, interactive catalogs and online video.

This strategy helps to create a consistent brand message while also reducing the cost of production, as online retailers aren’t required to pay a separate fee for each set of visual content they have created. This approach also provides a one-stop solution for online retailers who are then able to use the same imagery and content for direct mailing campaigns, email blasts, marketing collateral and even social media campaigns.

Another approach is solving the issue of device compatibility. Some devices aren’t compatible with certain software such as Adobe Flash, so it’s important to find a creative agency that also understands the technical concerns that go into offering rich media content. In this instance, HTML5 is often the best solution for cross-device compatibility.

How do I know if my strategy was successful?
The final component of a successful e-commerce strategy is measurement. The digital content is brand-consistent and the video and imagery is compatible on all devices, but are the customers making the purchase?

Conversion is measurable by comparing visits per product before visual content was added with those after. For the products that included 360-degree photographs, were fewer products returned? If so, it’s safe to assume that the ability to view the product from multiple angles allowed the consumer to better decide that the product fit their needs.

Or, did demo videos better explain a product, leading to an increase in the number of purchases? All of these factors help online retailers create an emotional connection between their products and the consumer, as well as increase confidence in their purchases.

Whether you’re working in luxury brands, women’s clothing, consumer electronics, home goods or food products, interactive visual content is necessary to drive the website user to purchase your products. By creating consistent and compatible multimedia content, online retailers gain the interest of the consumer as well as increase their confidence in the product and brand.

About the author: Jason Arena is the vice president of brand strategy and marketing at KSC Kreate.

Rich Media is the Future of Mobile Marketing

Michael Garrity — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:15:00 GMT

Web marketers are still trying to discover the most effective methods for mobile advertising. Now, there is evidence suggesting that the future of mobile marketing may lie in rich media ad units.

Jumptap recently released the data gathered in its MobileSTAT Report for September 2011, and found that current trends show rich media ad units dominating standard media in terms of click-through rates (CTRs), the primary method of measuring user engagement with mobile ads.

After reviewing over 300 million campaign impressions for a number of major Fortune 1000 advertisers running "both rich and standard media with similar creative and advertising," Jumptap noticed that rich media ad units saw a significant lift in CTR over their standard media counterparts.

The rich media format is seen as a great way to "inspire interaction" between consumers and a brand, and the dramatic rise in smartphone and tablet adoption by the general public has helped to increase the efficiency of these advertisements.

Among the companies that saw greater CTRs with rich media ads were:

- A major retailer, who saw a 337 percent lift over standard ad units

- A luxury auto manufacturer with a 357 percent lift

- An advertiser for a new theatrical release, 340 percent lift

- A quick service restaurant, 455 percent lift

- An athletics manufacturer, 214 percent lift

- A consumer electronics company, 362 percent lift

Android Remains on Top
Other findings released in the MobileSTAT report include figures that show Android still dominating the smartphone market with about 47 percent of smartphone owners using Android devices, the same number as August. Jumptap also reported "a 50/50 split" between mobile Web and app traffic by users accessing the internet on mobile devices, with Android leading app traffic and feature phones offering more mobile Web-based traffic than smartphones. Finally, advertisers named location-based targeting as the most popular method for trying to reach consumers on the Jumptap network.

Local.com Offers Rich Media Ad Platform

Linc Wonham — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Online local media company Local.com has released a rich media ad platform to incorporate dynamic, in-store product inventory availability and current pricing data for products sold by local retailers.

Rovion, a division of Local.com, has integrated the solution into the Rovion Ad Management Platform (RAMP). RAMP is initially being offered on a limited basis to select multi-channel retailers, consumer brands, agencies and publishers and will be rolled out later this year.

The Web-based RAMP platform allows clients to create, serve and track dynamic, original rich media ad units that incorporate local product and shopping data, without time-consuming and complex coding requirements. It also includes dynamic information on pricing, retailer sales, product details, store locations and near-real time in-stock availability powered by Krillion.

Krillion’s localized shopping data adds local relevance at the product level, increasing the targeting capabilities of rich media ads so that national campaigns can reach Web-influenced local shoppers across the U.S. Today, the growing Krillion local search index includes more than 1,200 brands from more than 60,000 retail locations.

To date, more than 100 million impressions have been served by RAMP. The platform generates revenue on a CPM basis when participating agencies’, brands’ and publishers’ ads are served.

According to Borrell Associates, local rich media display advertising now represents approximately 10 percent of the total local online advertising landscape. Rich media display advertising is expected to grow to $5.1 billion, or 37 percent of all banner advertising, by 2016.

According to Forrester Research, nearly half of retail sales are Web-influenced, and these web-influenced retail sales are expected to reach $1.2 trillion by the end of 2012.

Google’s Benchmark Data Shows 2010 Ad Effectiveness

Allison Howen — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Google’s annual display ad benchmark data for 2010 has been released and indicates an increased use of rich media and a steady click through rate (CTR) since 2009.

According to the report, marketers’ use of rich media ad formats doubled in 2010, accounting for 18 percent of impressions from 9 percent the year before. Image ads also increased to 28 percent in 2010 from 17 percent in 2009; however flash ads decreased from 74 percent in 2009 to 54 percent in 2010.

Although rich media ad formats doubled in 2010, the user expansion and interaction rate has continued to decline since a peak around January 2009 (around the time new IAB ad formats were initially introduced), yet the expansion rate did show some growth at the end of 2010 (the expansion rate is defined as the ratio of DoubleClick rich media ad expansions to the number of rich media expanding ad impressions displayed. The expansions are counted when a user expands an ad by rolling over it). Conversely, the click through rate remained consistent, staying at around .09 percent since the middle of 2009.

Data on the U.S. showed that the country had one of the lowest expansion rates, however had the highest expansion time— which shows that Americans are interacting with ads when they actually decide to expand them.

As for industry verticals, the "Auto" sector showed the best results with a .13 percent flash CTR and .12 percent rich media CTR. The lowest CTR came from the telecom and financial services sector with a .06 percent CTR in rich media ads, which also tied flash ads from financial services, also at .06 percent.

The question moving forward is, how do we increase rich media use even more among advertisers?

As the economy improves, so should advertising and the investment in newer targeting technologies including behavioral. It is safe to assume that any improvement on the delivery of ads will drive CTR’s, expansion and interaction - and expansion - rates up. Making advertising more accessible (combined with a rebounding economy) should create a better environment for consumers and provide more profitable results for advertisers.

Dissecting Display Advertising's Rebound

Mike Phillips — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:30:00 GMT

Display advertising is making a comeback. Across the board, display ad spending is up and across all mediums, too -- banner ads, rich media and video, included. But what's leading this resurgence, and how can advertisers take advantage of it? For answers, we spoke with Iggy Fanlo, CEO of adBrite in this week's edition of Website Magazine Radio.

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Rich Media Visibility Metrics

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:22:00 GMT

How do you know how much "visibility" your rich media ads are receiving? Short answer - you don't... but you do now. EyeWonder rolled out its Ad Visibility Suite yesterday, a set of metrics designed to give advertisers and publishers analysis of the real time an online ad is physically within the viewable area of a browser.

Among the metrics included in the suite are total time (in seconds) an ad is physically visible to users within their browsers, average visible time (in seconds) and visible time by percentage of visible area. Beyond interaction and click-through metrics, the Ad Visibility Suite tells advertisers which parts of their ads are actually visible at any given scroll position.

"As a leading innovator in the interactive digital advertising space, we're pleased to be the first rich media provider to offer these visibility metrics to our clients," said Ricky McClellen, EyeWonder's Chief Information Officer. "They make a great addition to our already robust reporting platform by complementing the ad interaction data we provide. Customers get a more comprehensive view of their ad performance by seeing the exact amount of time users have ads in their browser windows and comparing that with length of engagement. We're bringing these two pieces of the puzzle together to provide a more complete picture of what constitutes a successful online ad campaign, resulting in more meaningful measurement."

EyeBlaster Report on Ad Size & Rich Media

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:42:00 GMT

Does size matter in online advertising? According to a study from digital ad solution provider Eyeblaster it doesn’t but creative execution and rich media certainly do.

While it’s bit of a self-serving study in that Eyeblaster is a rich media provider, it should reinforce that quality and not quantity (size) matters when it comes to display advertising.

Eyeblaster has confirmed that size has less of an impact in rich media display ads than that of standard banners, and points to video, ad formats, flash features and expansion as key elements in driving performance. The study suggests that for rich media, half banners (234x60) are indeed the top performing rich media ad formats, followed by rectangle ad formats (180x150).

The company did provide some rather practical guidance on increasing performance and consumer engagement:

1.   Re-evaluate the role of technology and consider aligning creative with appropriate metrics in the beginning stages of planning a campaign.
2.   Use adaptive media to optimize, make creative changes creative of the fly and keep content fresh by swapping out video, sound, text, images, etc.
3.   For greatest impact, take into account placement on page, creative features, metrics and ad format over size.

"Eyeblaster data suggests that physical size of a banner has less to do with performance than creative execution and rich media," said Gal Trifon, CEO and co-founder at Eyeblaster. "This corroborates other published studies that reveal that bigger banners do not equate to better engagement."

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Ad Unit and Rich Media Creative Guidelines

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:09:00 GMT

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release of some Revised Ad Unit and Rich Media Creative Guidelines, which is expected to eliminate "points of friction" in the online ad buying process. The guidelines cover standard Web applications including e-mail, static and dynamic Web pages and address ad formats such as banners and buttons as well as transitional and various over-the-page units such as floating ads, page take-overs and tear-backs.

“Marketers understand that in the new digital ecosystem, the consumer expects an enhanced level of interaction and engagement with both content and advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “By defining certain ad formats and offering creative guidance for execution, we are paving the way for even greater adoption by marketers and ongoing innovation by agencies and publishers—that’s exciting for the industry and consumers.”