• by Masha Geller , September 8, 2003

On the heels of introducing version 5.3 of its popular rich media platform, Eyeblaster, Inc., has today introduced a free data collection solution for online advertising. According to the official announcement, released at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's First Annual Advertisers Forum in New York, the solution is fully integrated into Eyeblaster's platform and eliminates the need for any third party system to store or process data for sending dynamic emails automatically to users or other purposes.

"Lead generation, data collection and viral marketing have been among the most popular objectives of online advertisers for years," says Gal Trifon, CEO of Eyeblaster, adding that this enhancement will "make the process of adding such functionality to any rich media ad as simple as developing a Macromedia Flash element."

The company says that clients are now able to collect up to 20 fields of data within their rich media ads, all of which can be defined and managed by the agency through the Eyeblaster interface when creating the ad. When the ad runs and the user submits the form, the Eyeblaster platform automatically collects and archives the data for the agency to download.

By hosting data and creative assets within the same system, developing and launching campaigns takes minutes rather than days or weeks, and advertisers seem pleased. Suhaila Suhimi-Waldner, Account Director at Boston-based MPG Media Contacts, says she will gladly recommend the platform to all of the brands her company works with: "Our creative and production teams are extremely happy with the intuitive and completely hassle-free platform," she says.

Data collection within ads is extremely important for advertisers who want users to respond to ads by submitting personal information. Data such as name, email address, zip code and other preferences make it possible for advertisers to customize a response and create a closer relationship with the users. For online advertising in general, data collection and automatic emailing have been limited due to the costs and difficulties of implementing a database, managing the data, and personalizing and distributing email.