• BtoB, Monday, March 13, 2006 11:45 AM

Advertisers--especially those in the business-to-business category-- have discovered the benefits of using rich media in their online advertising efforts. New research shows that the number of advertising video streams increased by 50.2 percent in 2005, hitting 17.95 billion. "More and more, people are expecting to be shown in addition to being told," said David Hallerman, senior analyst with research firm eMarketer. "We don't have hard-and-fast numbers on this, but it's happening even more in the b-to-b world than the b-to-c," he said. The reason, he said, is b-to-b products' longer sales cycles and higher prices. B-to-b advertisers are also beginning to experiment with the form in which the rich media appears. Instead of simply adding rich media to a traditional banner ad, marketers are designing rich media surround campaigns--tying banners and skyscrapers together to form one continuous ad that really pops off the page, said Isaac Miknar, director of sales for Zedo, which develops ad serving technology. "B-to-b publishers are willing to sell out their whole pages to give advertisers a wraparound feel," he said. "You take those banners and ads and make them expandable so [advertisers] can make their ad a huge message and have lots of space to present their case."

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