Making Rich Media Work for You

  Recorded Live November 17, 2006

Rich media overview

No one has a common definition of what constitutes rich media, yet almost all advertisers agree that the key characteristic of rich media is its ability to engage consumers. In this segment, Gal Trifon will discuss what rich media is and why it’s important for advertisers to understand rich media in order to use the technology effectively.

Rich media tips and tricks

Once an advertiser decides to use rich media, there are even more questions to be answered: how can one be sure the technology is used the right way? How can an advertiser best leverage the technology to produce optimal results?

In this segment, Gal Trifon will provide three tips on how advertisers can get the most out of using rich media, using real-life examples to illustrate best practices.

The Power of Online Video

The rise of video’s popularity with users has been spectacular over just the last year. However, the potential online video advertising opportunity for advertisers is mitigated by other considerations, including appropriateness of content, response to advertising from consumers and the limited availability of quality inventory.

In this segment, Gal Trifon will describe what video options are available to advertisers today, how advertisers should evaluate the video opportunity and how advertisers can maximize the impact of video advertising online.

Emerging Opportunities in Rich Media

Rich media and video dominate today’s news, but what’s next for the rich media industry? In this session, Gal Trifon will discuss the emerging opportunities for rich media in two emerging categories, in-game advertising and mobile marketing, and will give his insight on rich media’s growth in the future.

When used correctly, rich media can be highly engaging, interactive and absorbing for consumers as well as a highly effective advertising tool for marketers. Rich media adoption is also exploding. A recent Kagan Research report forecasts rich media will be the fastest-growing sector of online advertising from 2006-2015, having topped $1 billion in 2005.

However, there is still a great deal of confusion in the marketplace about what rich media is and how advertisers can best use it to engage consumers. What are the benefits of rich media? The potential drawbacks? How should advertisers use rich media as part of an integrated digital marketing campaign to generate superior results?

Making Rich Media Work for You Summary

Discussing rich media, eMarketing Talk Show hosts Todd Sarouhan and Brooke Schumacher chat with Gal Trifon about what constitutes rich media and the benefits advertisers can derive from this medium.

The President and CEO of Eyeblaster, Gal Trifon is a visionary in the development of the rich media industry. Founded in 1999, Eyeblaster is a global leader in rich media ad technology. A frequent commentator on creativity and the future of online advertising, Gal Trifon in this eMarketing Talk Show discusses what rich media really is, and the future of this medium online.

According to Gal Trifon, “Rich media advertising is pretty much ads that include richer content types such as audio and video and trans-animations, and in general incorporates a much higher level of interactivity, so allowing the user to do much more with the ads.” Defining rich media he says, it is ads that take advantage of the capabilities of the medium both from a content stand point, which means including video, audio and animations of all kinds, as well as the interactive nature of the medium, which incorporates into the ads some applications such as data capture, dynamic data feeds and so on and so forth.

Importance of rich media is based on the fact that it has revolutionized online advertising at a time, when the medium was struggling trying to position itself attractively to brand advertisers. The product itself was very limited in creative capabilities and a new offering was needed to really allow and remove the constraints on the creative community and allow advertisers to communicate more effectively with users. And this is really what rich media brought to the table, “the ability to remove these constraints and allow impact and interactivity to add to the already attractive targeting and rich capabilities of the medium.”

Bandwidth availability also helps rich media, Gal says. It helps deliver video and audio, as well as helping more users stay online longer and delivering better content with which better advertising can be delivered. Overall one of the most important drivers for rich media growth was the more availability of broadband. “Right now,” says Trifon, “most brand advertisers when using online advertising, target for the highest bandwidth audience and build the ads around that.” They deal with the remaining audiences not as the default, but as the necessity just to complete the reach. In the US today, Gal says that the percentage of people with high bandwidth is approaching 50%. However, in the Far East and Europe this percentage is much higher.

Speaking about the benefits of rich media for advertisers, he says that the two most obvious benefits are impact which is what advertisers are looking for regardless of medium. Advertisers want to float above the clutter and deliver a really high quality message that resides with the user and creates whatever positive lifting awareness and appreciation for the product is possible. “Rich media certainly takes the impact to the next level, allowing the advertiser better quality of ads, more file sizes and more impact in general.” Secondly, the interactivity, which really allows the user to engage with the content. This is takes advertising into a completely new level that doesn’t exist in any other medium, the ability to interact directly with the content. If you find the product interesting, what rich media loves is rather than to leave the site and go to the destination website to learn more, one can gain more value and knowledge of the product from the advertising itself.

When asked if there are any drawbacks inhibiting more advertisers from taking advantage of this medium, Gal thinks traditionally, there were, with earlier concerns of rich media included being to intrusive and in your face. However, today the concern is not as great with many mainstream products now using rich media ads.

His first tip for rich media advertisers is to “respect the user overall.” What we’ve learnt over time is that the importance of incorporating such tools for the user to say no if he’s not interested is a great, as it lets the user have more respect for the brand. Also by incorporating a close button for example, and measuring how many people actually click to close the ad or skip it, is an important way of improving your content and learning how to best optimize your campaign. “There are many features related to the user experience and respecting it.”

The second tip is interactivity. If interactive features are incorporated into an ad, the marketer can really see what works or doesn’t work by measuring how people respond to the ad, and where they actually spend their time when viewing the ad. Gal Trifon’s third tip for rich media is the repurposing of traditional content of existing content. “This is a high priority tip and is a time and money saver for marketers.”

Though currently there are no formulas to measure the success rates of these rich media ads, Gal says there are benchmarks and markers available for advertisers to compare themselves to. There reason for no specific formula is based on the fact that there are so many different things that advertisers are trying to do and communicate to the users. For Gal polling is a great tool because from a user’s standpoint he feels that everyone likes to state their mind and see what others are saying. “With a poll the user is also telling you something about his level of interest and area of interest.” Thus, by using polling effectively you can actually segment your audience based on their answers and then target them with more relevant advertising and more relevant rich media.

Speaking about the power of online video today, Gal Trifon says it is flexible, interactive and affordable. Initially, video was used as a real tiny placement within an ad. However, nowadays you see video playing in an ad unit that really takes advantage of most of the placement of that unit. Youtube is a great example of the power of online video today and though it is only a content player at the moment, Gal hopes it will become a platform for video advertising.

With the effectiveness of video well proven over the years in TV, Gal Trifon feels that even today, very few content types compare with video in its ability to tell a story, generate an emotion and create a sense of quality. As long as a video is well produced and is entertaining, it can help communicate an attractive message and the user will respond. A great example of an industry harnessing the power of video online is the automotive sector. But now besides the big players, there is a new genre of marketers using video for the first time online because of its cost efficiency. Since it is actually easier to produce a video online than in a TV scenario, more and more marketers are using this medium.

Talking about the future of rich media, Gal states that there is a lot going on and things are moving very fast. The main 4 categories that should be followed when it comes to rich media are related to integration, distribution, simplification and interactivity. Gaming and mobile are two of many emerging media channels, all of which fall under the distribution category.

Speaking about in-gaming advertising, Gal says, “Game content resembles TV content in that the users spend a lot of time there.” What in-gaming advertising allows is really to sponsor the games that are otherwise paid for, and to provide the user with an immediate option rather than to continue and pay for the game by watch advertising in video formats. Many downloadable games use in-game advertising such as checkers, solitaire and action games. Gal also feels that more and more opportunities for in-game advertising will take place for Console and PC games such as PlayStation 3.

Mobile advertising is “a great next opportunity” as well according to Trifon, given that like console games it is a very well paid industry. By offering users an alternative of a sponsorship instead of a payment is certainly value that phone users will appreciate.