• by September 20, 2000

By David Cotriss

The SUPERSTITIALs: many in the e-commerce and advertising business see them as the holy grail of online advertising. With banner click-thrus averaging just 0.34%, the industry could certainly use a shot of adrenaline. However, in the race to solve this problem, many in the business are willing to try anything, hoping that it will help them reach their goals and objectives. With a volatile stock market, investors are demanding results. With all the companies that are promoting great new ways to market online, it pays to look beyond the "coolness" factor and try and discover the truth. In this case, it's the truth about whether SUPERSTITIALs are really as effective as everyone says.

The journey toward the answer begins with understanding what SUPERSTITIALs are all about. New York City-based Unicast Communications introduced the format in May of 1999, and has since been used in campaigns by big league firms including American Express, Intel, Microsoft, Nissan, Warner Brothers, and SmithKline Beecham. SUPERSTITIALs are essentially commercials that feature sound and graphics and can be any size, from a postage stamp to full-screen. They can be up to 100K in size and can be created in almost any format. Perhaps the most popular format is Macromedia Flash animation, which uses vector-based graphics for fast play on slow modems.

SUPERSTITIALs don't slow down the user's system since they are pre-loaded in the background into the browser cache while the user is idle, when the site content has been completely downloaded. When completely loaded, the ad stays in the browser cache until the user clicks to another page. The SUPERSTITIAL opens and plays in another window, between the pages of content while the new page loads. This differs from Interstitials, which compete with a site's loading process by appearing immediately upon entry, slowing down the user's experience. Not too many people dispute the advantages of SUPERSTITIALs over Interstitials.

Recent far-reaching distribution deals and marketing agreements seem to validate the ad format. However, it still calls for separating hype from fact. Perhaps the most effective way to do this is to look at several case studies in which SUPERSTITIALs played a major role covering key industries that use them, along with an in-depth test of the format conducted by Millward Brown Interactive, a leading advertising and e-commerce measurement firm with offices worldwide.

One industry in which SUPERSTITIALs are making major inroads lately is nonprofit organizations. Always in search of new ways to spur activism, non-profits are looking favorably upon the new ad format. An increasing number of non-profits are using them according to Kelly O'Neal, Web Marketing Manager for TechRocks, a leading organization whose goal is to accelerate social and political change by encouraging community collaboration and engagement through the use of technology. O'Neal is President of Ou