With the Internet being the new marketing frontier, online advertising has been projected to grow exponentially for years to come. What might be surprising to some is that the key area of growth will be in the rich media sector - not search ads. Search ads will still be strong though, as it is predicted it will be the second fastest growing advertising category.
Kagan Research says that rich media topped $1 billion in 2005 and will grow at a healthy 16% annual rate through 2015. This is huge growth be any standard of measurement.
Rich media involves a number of elements that encourage interactivity by the viewer. Things like games or tools that can be interacted with, plus audio, sound or animation. Usually it is used in combinations.
Christian Anthony, Chairman and Co-CEO of interactive ad agency Special Ops Media said, "What our clients love is the detail of the reporting on audience interaction, thus, the ad itself becomes a kind of microsite to compare interaction rates of various elements."
In other words, the ad, being similar to a small web site, has numerous elements within it that can be measured, giving marketers a treasure trove of details about its performance. What works and what doesn't can be quickly determined and adjustments made.
Here is a list of several key advantages to rich media ads over their counterparts:
1. Increases engagement with the visitor
While the average rate of interaction with an ad is 18%, rich media ads command a huge rate of 46.7%; almost 30% more than other ad offerings.
2. Get premium ad prices
Anthony also added that you can get much higher ad rates from rich media than others also. For example, if you had a display ad that brought in $5.00 cpm, you could use the same virtual real estate to offer rich media ads for over double the price. There aren't a lot of tools available to us that can increase our business by over 100% by just changing the means of engagement.
3. It is a great branding tool
With the high rates of interaction that accompany rich media, this makes it the best online branding tool. The average time of interaction by online users is between 15-18 seconds, rich media is interacted with on an average of 21.7 seconds. This may not sound like much, but online that's a lot of extra time.
4. Rich media has a "wow" factor with its users
When done right, this can be a great advantage for marketers. People do like stuff that offers them a unique experience; it also makes them remember who did it. What we all have to be careful with is not offering too much. There's a fine line here, that when crossed, turns off the user. You don't want your site to look like your walking into a casino with lights, buzzers and things blinking off and on everywhere - this will take away from the uniqueness and only cause visitors to immediately leave.
You get all of these advantages plus the unique strength of the Internet to be able to add all sorts of measurements to the medium to be able to get a total picture of exactly how the ad is being engaged. You can track about anything within the ad that you want to, to see how it is performing. Look seriously at using rich media ads as part of your marketing campaign.
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