Rabu, 28 November 2007

Rich Media Advertising Demystified

by Tulika Dube

Rich media ads use video, audio, animation, interactive features and games to engage, entertain and educate customers about products and services. Rich media ads have made it possible to track various consumer interactions like rate and time of interactions, video plays and other custom interactions. The standard types of rich media ads as specified by IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) are:
1. In-Page Ads: These ads are displayed in preset banner/rectangle/skyscraper areas of a web page.
2. Out-of Page Ads: These ads appear outside the standard web page. Out-of-page ads can be further classified as below:
1. Expandable Ads: Expandable Ads expand in size whenever a user moves the mouse over the ad or clicks to interact with it. Push-down ads automatically expand when the page loads and are also called server-initiated expandables
2. Floating Ads: Ads that appear as a layer on top of the user's current page; These ads can move across the page in a variety of shapes and sizes and 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. Examples: United Virtualities Shoshkeles
3. Page Overlays: Full-page Overlay is a full page ad that moves within a transparent layer over a page and plays within a limited area.
4. Pop-up Ads: These ads launch a new smaller browser window that appears above the open page (the advancement of pop-up blockers have made these ads less popular)
5. Transitional Ads/Interstitials/Between-Page Ads: These ads appear between one page and another as the user clicks through the site
3. In-Stream Ads: Pre-roll or post-roll video ads are inserted within video content on a publisher's site. In-stream video is often considered a form of rich media, but is rarely based in Flash. In-stream ads are controlled by the publishers and have limited tracking capabilities
Best Practices for Rich media ads as set by IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) are:
1. The use of Polite technology that allows part of the ad to load before the content; the rest loads once the content is finished. IAB stipulates that the maximum file size on initial download should be 40 Kb.
2. Audio in rich media ads should be user Initiated
3. Animation length of ads should be 15 seconds except interstitials which can be 30 seconds long
4. Controls like "Close X" should have a font size of 16
The common technologies for building rich media ads are Flash, Java and DHTML. Flash is the most popular among these. Specialized rich media advertising platforms, including DART Motif, PointRoll and Eyeblaster, are based on Flash with added advertising-specific functions like ad design tools, serving, tracking and reporting.
References:
1. http://www.iab.net/standards/richmedia.asp
2. DoubleClick's white paper "The Evolution of Rich Media Advertising: Current Market Trends, Success Metrics and Best Practices"

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