"Rich media advertising is still a pioneering field, but the future of advertising depends on it," says Bill McCloskey, CEO of Emerging Interest.
McCloskey made the statement at the Rich Media
Road Show in New York yesterday. The event, the first of three rich media shows sponsored by MediaPost and Emerging Interest that will also be held in Boston and San Francisco, brought together
industry leaders who discussed a variety of rich media issues in front of a group of rich media buyers and other advertising professionals.
McCloskey, the first speaker, wrote a white paper on rich
media that was distributed at the event. He summarized it during his keynote address, noting that rich media is a new but rapidly growing medium that is on the verge of success. Comparing it to TV
advertising, which started with rudimentary ads for DeSoto before Apple created its legendary 1984 spot, he sees rich media as in its infancy, but soon to grow with the recent introduction of larger
size ad units. The larger units, viewed more frequently and selling at a higher CPM, represent a major advance for the industry.
But he also mentioned a rich media divide, in which some sites will
adopt the new formats while others will hold back because of technical problems. "The sites embracing the new formats will rise to the top," he says.
Kate Atherley, Microsoft’s business development
manager, presented the good and bad points of rich media. The good points are: the audience is growing, with 50 million digital media users in the U.S. today and 91 million predicted by 2003; the
users are affluent and educated; it is highly targetable; and the brand impact is far superior to banners ("If it moves, you remember it," she says). The bad points are: there is not enough awareness
of the technology; its value is unproven; there have been few implementations to date; and there is a lack of unit size and tracking standards.
Atherley's point about branding was elaborated on by
the next speaker, Jeffrey Graham, president of Dynamic Logic, a firm that does branding studies. He argued that click through rates shouldn’t be used to measure rich media campaigns, because they
generate brand awareness from users who don’t click through. "Behaviors and attitudes are generated by rich media," he says, "and click throughs don’t measure that."
Many of the speakers showed
examples of rich media campaigns. Kevin Noonan, vice president of research at Yankee Group, discussed three successful campaigns, providing information on the agencies involved, the sites they used
and the types of rich media. He discussed rich media campaigns for HBO, British Airways and Diamond Trading Company.
Tom Hespos, Internet strategist at Mezzina Brown & Partners, suggested that
agencies are unprepared for rich media advertising, since "they aren’t set up to evaluate rich media formats." None of the individual agency departments, such as media and creative, know how to select
rich media formats, so rich media companies have no one to meet with to present their technologies. His solution is for agencies to set up rich media committees, comprised of representatives from the
different departments. The extra expense will pay off with rich media campaigns that generate higher response and interaction rates, he says.
Richy Glassberg, CEO of Phase2Media and the vice
chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau, spoke about the IAB’s efforts to create new standards. While the IAB has been criticized for not developing rich media standards yet, Glassberg says, "rich
media is next." An IAB committee is currently working on efforts to develop rich media standards that will cover key issues, including the length of time rich media advertising should run and the
reporting and tracking of rich media campaigns. The new large size formats the IAB issued can be used for rich media campaigns, so the new rich media standards being developed will have nothing to do
with unit sizes, Glassberg says.
Late in the day, a technology shoot out was held, with 15 rich media companies describing their offerings to the crowd.
- Ken Liebeskind may be reached at
kenrunz@aol.com