The ad technology company's Spotlight for Rich Media will enable advertisers and agencies to measure conversion rates for various actions taken within rich media ads, including rollovers, ad expansions, multiple click-throughs and video plays.

Previously, DoubleClick's Spotlight reporting feature tracked conversion rates for overall ad impressions without digging deeper into the performance of an ad's separate interactive elements. "These [rich media] ads are becoming like microsites on their own, and no one's been able to identify what generates results and what doesn't," explained Ari Paparo, vice president for advertising products at DoubleClick.

The goal is to help clients determine the actual dollar returns on specific ad formats, and attributions used within creative campaigns, to make ad buys more efficient. "We're essentially breaking open the creative and correlating individual creative elements to return on investment," said Paparo.

As an example, he referred to an expandable ad with two buttons: one to buy a product and another to learn more before making a purchase. By using Spotlight for Rich Media, an advertiser might find that the "learn more" button actually delivers a better ROI than the "buy" button, especially for a more expensive or complex product. The marketer could then use that information to tweak the creative by enlarging the "learn more" button within the ad.

For marketers pouring more dollars into video ads, the technology will also allow them to compare returns on things like video plays started and videos played to completion. "What they get out of it is the insight to develop better creative the next time," said Paparo.

Large agencies in particular are demanding increased accountability and optimization as clients devote increasing portions of ad budgets to rich media, he said. Spending in that category reached $1.4 billion in 2007, according to a study conducted last year by Veronis Suhler Stevenson and research firm PQ Media. It projected that rich media spending would increase 17% on average annually from 2006 to 2011. A JP Morgan report issued last week forecast the overall online display ad market to hit $8.6 billion in 2008, fueled by higher CPM rates.

Starcom USA is among several agencies that have been testing DoubleClick's more refined reporting capability. "This is an important breakthrough, because we're now able to use DoubleClick's Spotlight for Rich Media to more efficiently capture and report on data that is increasingly crucial to understanding the full impact of advertising," said Jeff Marshall, Starcom's senior vice president and digital managing director, in a prepared statement.

Agency clients already using DoubleClick's DART ad-serving platform can simply use existing Spotlight tags within the platform to begin measuring rich media conversion rates. There is no extra charge for the new service.

The conversions themselves can be tailored to the goals of a particular campaign, and include actions such as purchases, newsletter sign-ups and page views.

Paparo wouldn't discuss findings about rich media conversion rates based on testing the company has done so far with the new tracking technology. He said DoubleClick plans to release a case study on the topic in the next three to six months. But he offered that the company has found an "extremely high correlation" between video plays and expanding ads and higher conversion rates.

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