• by October 31, 2003

DoubleClick is following the July release of its DART Motif rich media product by adding multi-event reporting to its slate of features. DART users can now get more comprehensive data on how Web crawlers interact with their ads, as well as a better sense of ROI.

While DART Motif has been adopted by a bunch of big-name ad agencies, companies and publishers in the months since its debut, including Ford Motor Media, MPG Media Contacts, CBS, MTV Networks and Universal McCann Interactive, but there have murmurs that the system is much ado about nothing.

DART Motif's big advantage is that it allows Web designers to view creative live on a site, rather than wait for the ad to go through the often rigorous and time-consuming process of getting prototypes of ads tested and approved Another big plus is that it's integrated with Flash. But critics say these aren't especially innovative in light of other products on the market. "It was probably about time that DoubleClick moved out of the dark ages," one notes.

Needless to say, DoubleClick is considerably more enthusiastic about prospects for the upgraded DART Motif. "It will give advertisers the full picture," says DoubleClick vice president and general manager, advertiser and publisher solutions Doug Knopper. "You'll be able to see what's happening in the ad, how long people spent with it - pretty much anything you could ask for."

Among the metrics that DART Motif automatically tracks are ad display time and ratio, ad interaction time and interactive impressions. Users can configure DART Motif to track other events as well, including exit links, event counters and timer events. "You can trace any user's way through a rich- media ad," Knopper explains. "Did they load a product demo? Did they spend 60 minutes on that golf game on the Orbitz site? For any marketer focusing on ROI, this is absolutely key."

Knopper touts DART's ReportCentral feature, which allows marketers to compare rich media and non-rich media ads side by side. The major advantage to this, Knopper adds, is that it automates the task of manually consolidating all data. "It's so complex - you have ten different pieces of data on 30 sites, and pulling everything together was so hard. It was like having to go into 2,500 Excel spreadsheets and pull out cell 13B from each one."

DoubleClick's most recent Ad Serving Trend Report notes that 37% of all ads served on its system are rich media. And while the company tends to subscribe to a broad definition of rich media - "it's anything that is either non- static, whether flash or animation, or anything out of the page," Knopper says - 37% is still considerably higher than most estimates. And while he concedes that rich media has had a "slower startup than anyone would have liked," Knopper notes that the top rich media advertisers tend to be large traditional advertisers.

"Ford, Wal-Mart, 7 UP and the pharma companies are all there already," he says. "And once they start spending [on rich media], they're not going to stop."