• by Ken Liebeskind , July 29, 2002

Two well-known rich media companies – Eyeblaster and Unicast - are kicking off the week with major enhancements to their services.

Eyeblaster, which provides an online administrative platform for the creation, serving, management and tracking of rich media advertising, today introduced Version 4.2 of its ad management platform.

The new version includes a directory of creative specs media buyers can use to determine which sites accept the rich media formats it wants to run. Data on 200 publishers are searchable, with 300 expected by August 15 and 600 by the end of the third quarter. The feature enables buyers to "search for sites and see what they support," says Gal Trifon, Eyeblaster's president/CEO. "It eliminates the creative negotiation because what the sites supports is well defined."

Version 4.2 also supports a new rich media format, the commercial break, which runs while a user goes to a new Web page. Agencies can log onto their Eyeblaster account, create a commercial break and export it to a publisher.

Version 4.2 also supports Macromedia Flash 6.0 and offers a new email notification option for publishers to prevent underdelivery. It is available on the desktops of more than 180 agencies and 600 publishers.

Unicast, well known for the Superstitial, is introducing an Online Format Suite today that offers a variety of online formats in addition to the Superstitial that can all be purchased from Unicast.

In Between, Over-Page and In-Page units are available in the format suite. The Superstitial is the In Between format, served between pages during a Web visit. Over-page and In-Page units are rich media and static units that Unicast offers through partnerships with Enliven and Ad4ever.

In today's announcement, Unicast offered a suggested campaign that starts with an In Betweeen page unit that anchors the online campaign. Then, messages from the In Between unit would be incorporated into Over-Page and In-Page ads to complete a campaign.

Unicast's chairman/CEO Richard Hopple, says the suite will "simplify the entire space for the benefit of all the respective parties. The efficiencies inherent in a single-vendor environment will accelerate the publisher’s drive.”