Flash Rich Media

What Really is Rich Media?

Until now, rich media has been the term used to define any ad format that isn't standard GIF. But as the medium evolves, "rich" should refer to something richer.

Rich media. You hear the term used all the time in reference to online advertising. When someone is referring to a form of display advertising on the Web that is fetching to the eye, or created in a format that isn't standard GIF, it is invariably identified as being 'rich media.'

Lots of online ad units being run these days are created and served in formats that have, over the years, been referred to as "rich media." But many of these formats, like Flash, or the means by which they are carried, like with technology from Eyeblaster, Unicast, CheckM8 and others, are becoming more and more common. According to the 2002 DoubleClick Ad Serving Trends report, 25% of online ads served were termed rich media. It likely won't be long until these will be the standard for display advertising on the Web.

Like the prefix "electro-" back in the '50s, "rich" eventually will be dropped and we will just be calling it "media." But one thing we've all learned about this medium is that it never stops innovating and something even newer is always moving towards us from the horizon.

Technology and publishing concerns are partnering with creative developers to change the way online media deals with its most fetching and engaging assets. These changes and the fluid nature of this still-developing medium means that the definition of just what constitutes display advertising online is changing, as well as what might be coming to put the "rich" back in front of "media."

"The usefulness of the term 'rich' is waning," says Paul Kadin, executive vice president of Eyeblaster. "There are so many gradations of visual elements, animation, interactivity, geography, etc. that the term is not helpful. The whole online/interactive media category does not benefit from making the distinction that some media types are 'better' than others."

This is essentially correct. For those of us working inside the category of online media, we would likely be better served to not suggest contest and "otherness" by applying the label of "rich" to the kinds of display advertising being used. It can lead to confusion for those who do not have any familiarity with online advertising, and it can have the unintended consequence of denigrating common forms of online display advertising that has been long under way by countless advertisers over the years.

"'Rich media' as a catch-phrase is over-stretched," says Tim Taylor, director of Interactive Marketing for True North Inc. "Some use it simply to mean ads delivered in Flash. A narrower definition would be ads that use audio and video-anything more than just simple animation.

"A more specific term we've been using is 'rich content' to mean an ad that pulls in additional information from a server beyond what is served up with the initial load."

Proper names are important if you want to be clear about what it is being referred to when we are talking about what kinds of ad formats are in use and what characteristics are associated with them. But if we are going to use a term like "rich media," what should it refer to?

"I've had a rough time with calling Flash rich media. Not that I look at it as being standard, but I see rich media as being beyond the standard," says the CEO of PointRoll, Jules Gardner.

In Gardner's view, if we are going to refer to things as rich media, those things should be something outside of page-based ad units. He feels that standard IMUs done in a format like Flash shouldn't be referred to as rich media. The point being not that Flash isn't interesting or that cool advertising isn't done with it, but that its ubiquity and the canvas on which Flash is applied shouldn't qualify it for "rich" status.

Maybe the moniker of "rich media" is important when trying to identify a particular class of advertising objects and the characteristics they possess. Perhaps the real meaning of the term is to identify not the unit itself but that which facilitates the unit's ability to exist.

"The way I look at it is why are we making the difference between the ways it is named? We aren't making the difference in actual media, but in reference to the technology that is used," says Scott Spencer, director of Product Management at DoubleClick.

Spencer points out that the label of rich media or non-rich media are technology differentiators, not media distinctions.

In some ways, Spencer is right. Among the biggest considerations agencies have to make when deciding whether or not to execute a creative unit deemed "rich media," one of the most important is the feasibility of creating and successfully deploying it. The outcome is dictated almost strictly by the technology.

And that's been a major barrier to even broader use of those creative units that would be considered by the likes of PointRoll's Gardner as genuine "rich media." Too often complications arising from the deployment of these kinds of ad units stand as a barrier to them being created at all. Many times the term "rich media" means days and sometimes weeks of headaches for agencies that have created the ad units and the sites on which they are supposed to run.

"Much of our development focus has been on streamlining the trafficking function, especially when it comes to rich media," says Young-Bean Song, director of Analytics & Atlas Institute for Atlas DMT. "The Atlas Suite has testing and deployment tools that automate the most time-consuming rich-media trafficking tasks, in many cases, making a rich-media campaign as easy to manage and traffic as a standard banner campaign."

That which takes time costs money. The difficulties in getting most of the variety of rich media types up and running, many of which derive from technical barriers, are cost considerations that hold many clients back. Why spend the money and the man-hours to get something that was originally slated to run for a month or two?

"If the cost of deploying it is too high relative to the increase in return I get I won't make the trade off," says DoubleClick's Spencer.

When DoubleClick looked at the problem of rich media and technologies bearing on it, they looked at "how to make the effort in cost of the man-hours lower relative to return," says Spencer.

As a result of the current hardships associated with getting truly rich-media creative out there, a lot of the more substantial publishers such as Yahoo! and CBSMarketwatch have opted for homegrown solutions that bypass a lot of the typical aggravations. The sites work with agencies and often times commit the heavy lifting in order to execute truly original online ad units that put the "rich" back in front of "media."

"I think that what third-party rich-media companies bring to the tableand what big portals have brought to the table is developing an open system," says Gardner of PointRoll.

Improved technologies may put some of that power back in the hands of agencies for unit types that aren't quite as complex as those found with things like a Yahoo! homepage take-over but are still terribly interesting and very effective.

There are ample studies and stacks of research that prove "bigger is better" and that units that "do something" seem to be more effective than those that just sit there. But the Macromedia Multi-tracking Kit being adopted by many of the third-party ad servers as a standard will allow creative to be authored once and then be served anywhere.

According to Song of Atlas DMT, the Multi-tracking Kit standard not only facilitates the authoring and trafficking process, but makes reporting easy and reliable. Once fully in place, metrics such as time-in-place and length-of-interaction with a particular rich-media unit can be used to better understand how rich ads affect brand awareness and purchase intent.

Assuming that third-party ad servers and third-party rich-media vendors get it right by making creative ad units that are not standard in-page units easier to use and deliver, what will we be able to consider "rich media?" Third-party rich-media vendors keep making units bigger and sites keep giving more space to standard display ads, but what's going to really fetch the eye and take real advantage of the medium?

"New media types like 3D and video compositing with Flash are expanding the creative palette," states Kadin of Eyeblaster. "Personalization of IM with 'interactive buddy icons' and personalized avatars will make their way into interactive ads."

Essentially, it is going to be interactivity that makes interactive advertising ad units hang on to "rich" status.

"Rich content ads we've done have allowed users, without leaving the ad, to view multiple video clips, watch deleted scenes, download wallpaper and screen savers, vote for favorite superheroes, request email follow-ups, or, most recently, subscribe to Discover magazine," Taylor says. "We've seen fun ads from other agencies that let users create their own drawings and post them to friends or send messages directly to cell phones."

What is going to serve as the signifier for the signified "rich media" is going to be something that continues to look, feel, and act brand new but can still be reliable.

"Standardization versus innovation," is the contest according to Spencer. "Our goal is to promote innovation through standardization by creating a tool that makes it easy to create" rich-media units.

And it is the place where standardization and innovation meet that is going to be the crucible in which "rich media" will be defined.