• by March 7, 2001

By Ken Liebeskind

Many think that rich media is a TV commercial streamed online. But it is so much more than that. Just ask Universal Studios Home Video, which is using four different rich media formats in a campaign to sell Meet the Parents DVDs and videos.

The three-week online campaign, running now through March 17, was developed by I-Frontier, an interactive agency in Philadelphia. The agency produced one of the rich media formats itself and bought the others from third party vendors.

DHTML, the format that could be produced in house because it operates on standard programming language, features live action images that move across the screen. The ad, appearing on Maxim.com, Iwon.com and Datinghorrorstories.com, a site I-Frontier created for the campaign, features two banner ads. In one version, a champagne bottle on the left banner, part of a Meet the Parents ad, moves across the screen and smashes a funeral urn on the right banner. After viewers watch the action, they can click through to purchase the movie. The action is timed to take place after the content on the page loads and lasts less than 10 seconds, according to Jeremy Lockhorn, I-Frontier's director of media technologies. He says the format "allows you to animate with layers, with elements interacting on the page."

Randy Malinoff, vice president of internet marketing at Universal Studios Home Video, says this is the first time the company has used DHTML. It has used other rich media formats before.

The second rich media format used in the campaign, from Pointroll, a Philadelphia company, is an expanding banner. When viewers roll their mouse over the ad (without clicking), the ad expands. In one case, the ad expands into a trivia game and in another it expands to show more information about the film and its stars. After viewers answer the trivia question, a daughter window pops up with the answer. A Meet the Parents site also pops up in the background, encouraging viewers to click through to order. The ad appears on Maxim.com.

The next rich media format is StreakingMedia, a new offering from Bluestreak, a Newport, RI firm. The java-based, plug in-free format shows live action video within a standard banner that expands. When viewers first see the ad, it's a standard 468 x 60 banner. Within the banner a live action video plays with a control button that can be clicked to enlarge the video. When clicked, it grows to 468 x 210, approximately three times the size. A 30 second movie trailer is shown. After seeing the trailer, another click takes viewers to a page where they can register to win a DVD. The ads will appear on Hollywood.com and MTV.com.

Lockhorn says I-Frontier is beta testing the new format, which was introduced last week. Gavin Finn, Bluestreak's coo, says the format will work with any unit size, not just traditional 468 x 60 banners. All of the new Internet Advertising Bureau sizes can be used.

The final rich media format being used is Unic