• by June 4, 2008

Since the birth of traditional advertising up until around 10 years ago, just about every venue was historically a passive one: Audiences passively absorbed ads via newspapers, magazines, radios and TV.

As the Internet evolved past its techno-geek beginnings and entered its mass market phase, advertisers and agencies got their first real crack at creating truly interactive ad experiences. For the first time on a major scale, online advertising broke through the interactive barrier with video, audio, games, viral and other features that invited users to actively participate in the ad experience. A quiet revolution began taking place. Audiences of former couch potatoes started leading far more interactive lives online than they ever did in front of their TV sets, and advertisers were offered the potential to create more meaningful 'dialogues' with consumers.

Today, Interactive Digital Advertising has transformed both the audiences' and the advertisers' expectations with regard to online advertising. As a result, expenditures for global online advertising are projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $147 billion in 2012, according to the Kelsey Group. Let's take a look at how this whole transformation got started.

In-page ads were the first to break the interactive barrier. What was once just a simple picture or animation and a call to click-through to the brand's website for the real meat of the message has now started to transform into fully interactive site-like experiences all within in-page ads. Audiences no longer have to click all the way through to the website to have a meaningful experience with the brand: interactive digital elements within the ads themselves are engaging more and more users for longer and longer periods of time.

The beauty of Interactive Digital Advertising is that all of these interactions are completely trackable and measurable. With interactive ads, advertisers now know exactly how many people are interacting, how long they are interacting, and what they are interacting with. As a result, brands are benefiting from this increased and immersive exposure with stronger lift across all the top metrics: awareness, message association, favorability and purchase intent.

As marketers started to leverage all these new digital options, they unearthed the core value inherent within online advertising - interaction. Today's in-page ads let users expand them to reveal even more media and interactivity, and can feature multiple videos, audio tracks, games and more that provoke users to spend not only seconds with ads, but minutes. Recent EyeWonder campaigns have even featured up to forty minutes of video in one ad unit, generating unprecedented view times that are quickly approaching an hour!

Today, a similar revolution is happening in the video content advertising arena. In-stream ads are interactive ad units that run prior to or within video content on sites like CNN, ESPN, MSN and more. Until recently, advertisers were simply repurposing the same old passive TV spots into non-interactive pre-roll ad units online, perpetuating the passive ad experiences of the past. This is a less than optimal use of the media space for all parties involved: audiences don't engage with the ads, sites may be perceived as annoying instead of entertaining, and advertisers aren't getting data on ad interactions, because there are no ad interactions.

Fortunately certain rich media providers and publishers are taking a page from the in-page playbook, and are bringing the same levels of interactivity into the in-stream ad environment. Now, instead of waiting 15 or 30 seconds for your desired video content while the same old repurposed, passive TV spot plays, advertisers can deliver interactive ads that let users dive in deeper at their discretion, creating new opportunities for brand interaction in a formerly passive arena. The result? All the same interactive benefits now apply to in-stream: increased interaction opportunities, rates and times, more comprehensive tracking and measurement opportunities, and better results for agencies, publishers and users.

Studies show that publishers benefit from the interactive revolution through an increased number of visitors to their sites and enhanced site "stickiness" (users spending more time on the site). More importantly, publishers are typically able to generate more ad revenue from richer, interactive ads than their passive counterparts.

Interactive video is today's the most visible driver in terms of ad performance. According to a June 2007 Online Publishing Association report, of the 80% of viewers who watched a video ad online, 52% took some sort of action, whether checking out a Web site (31%), searching for more info (22%), going into a store (15%), or actually making a purchase (12%). As such, eMarketer is predicting that video is going to see the biggest growth in spend in 2008, with an increase of 48.9%.

Unlike passive banner ads, interactive ads empower users and give them control over their ad experience by tastefully inviting them to interact. These ads not only provide creative content like games, widget sharing and online videos, they allow users to voluntarily opt into the ad and control the amount of time spend with that ad -- whether it's 15 seconds on a short video, three minutes on an interactive game, or more. Ultimately, this forges a more powerful link between brand and consumer.

From long-form video and audio to interactive games and direct response, advertisers have an increasing number of resources at their disposable. Unlike passive in-page and in-stream ads, interactive ads that offer features like streaming videos, interactive games, widget sharing and more enable advertisers to stay better connected with their audiences.

With each new emerging ad venue comes a new opportunity, but the ultimate key to success for each is the same: interactivity. As emerging formats like IPTV, mobile, 3D and virtual worlds become more popular, advertisers will benefit when the venue evolves to the point where it can accommodate truly interactive ad experiences that attract more audiences and engage them longer.

Combine this with the inherent measurability of digital advertising, and you get a wealth of data that advertisers and agencies can use to make more intelligent and optimized advertising decisions. Interactive Digital Advertising will generate brand engagements and returns on investment that seemed unimaginable even ten years ago. In this new world, passive venues will become afterthoughts, and forward-thinking brands will interact to own the marketplace.