There are normal flash ads on the web, and then there are rich media ads. No doubt, you’ve noticed them on sites like SMH and NineMSN, but you might not have known what they were called. These are the ads that show you a video on roll-over, or appear over the top of content, or even—in the case of an Avatar ad I saw recently—grab the whole bloody website, and shove it down in simulated 3D so they can show their own page above it. That’s cheeky! But it makes you notice and, as Ben would say, go “Ooo!”
We all know the value of the average flash ad. Getting your message to an interested/relevant/measurable audience, and then delivering them straight to your site is about as good as it gets. But these basic ads have their limitations:
- File size: the average flash banner ad will have a 40KB file size limit. To give you an idea, the image below has already busted that limit at 42.22KB. So it’s not a lot to work with! With rich media, immediately that gets boosted to 100KB, once the rest of the site has downloaded (It’s called polite downloading). Then, with user interaction, it can go up to 1 or 2 MB, and that’s how we’re able to include video (which has its own benefits).
- Attention and impact: these ads have a lot of competition for attention, and next to a rich ad, your average flash banner will probably lose out. Rich media ads also have more opportunity for interaction and engagement, creating greater impact and memorability.
- Confidence: if you want to instill confidence, and look like one of the big boys, rich media ads are the way to go. It’s a bit of a game of “mine is bigger and better than yours.”
Examples of rich media ads:
- Synched: different ads interact with each other. Press a button in the leaderboard, and the side panels change.
- Expanding: average flash banners are not very big, get more room with expanding content.
- Over the page (OTP): have your product fly in over news articles.
Through Orion Creative, all these solutions are available to you.
Please note, if you are booking the ads yourself, keep in mind that rich media advertising is going to cost a little more, above the cost of booking the ads, as it has to be served through a third-party company.
