• by Paul Gough , October 20, 2003

When DoubleClick executives look to the future, they hope it will be a rich one - rich media, that is.

When the company released its third-quarter earnings late last week the news was good. DoubleClick's revenues were $74.8 million compared to $63.5 million in the third quarter of 2002. But the real story wasn't what DoubleClick saw in the businesses they were in but what might happen in years to come after it launches its new DART Motif.

Motif, which will mark DoubleClick's entry into rich media, will be released early next year. But already DoubleClick has big plans for it. Executives told Wall Street analysts during a conference call Thursday not to expect overall ad serving revenues to grow throughout the industry as much as overall ad volume.

CEO Kevin Ryan said the fastest growing segments are paid listings and rich media. Rich media is where DoubleClick wants to grow its market share. It's setting its sights on the estimated $40 million to $50 million in annual revenues for rich media.

And that's growing at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a year, he said.

DART Motif, which is being developed in conjunction with Macromedia, is billed as a faster way to go from creative to live in rich media, the kind of interactive advertising that is most like TV spots. DoubleClick's July 2003 White Paper sees big things for rich media, forecasting it to become the standard by 2005. Already it's grown 60 percent since 2001, becoming between 14 percent and 28 percent of the online ads that are served.

Ryan said plans haven't been finalized and that it would be several months before DoubleClick would release more details about Motif and its plans in rich media.

"Come January, we hope we can tell you that we're going to get a big piece of that," Ryan said.