Rich media advertising

Sushil Kokate | December 4, 2020

Rich media is an advertising technology that engages customers while allowing brands to communicate their value propositions. If you are looking for a way to breathe new life into your advertising campaigns, rich media is something to consider. Relying solely on standard creative can not only cost you money but can leave you falling behind your competition.

What is rich media?

Rich media is typically defined as digital advertising creative that meets the following criteria:

• Larger file size (greater than 200KB)
• May use multiple files as opposed to a single static file
• Can contain videos
• Contains complex animation effects encompassing the hosting webpage
• Possesses enhanced metric tracking capabilities
• Can include interactive components such as multiple CTAs, polling, image galleries, or gamified interactivities

Good examples of rich media include interactive video advertisements, interactive banner ads, or multi-directional expanding ads on any compatible website. These advertisements are often dynamic, eye-catching, and encourage interaction through attractive ‘Call To Action’ buttons or advanced clickable components. Compared to traditional static or ‘Standard Creative’, rich media offers a range of advantages to both customers and businesses alike.

Benefits of rich media ads

Rich media ads outperform standard and animated display ads with increased conversions, click-through, and view-through rates. Sizmek’s benchmarking data has shown that standard ads had an average click-through rate of 0.15%. Whereas rich media ads yielded a CTR of 0.75% to 0.94%. Ads with video have yielded whooping 3.10% CTR. Moreover, the banner interaction rate was also at around 1.70% for rich media formats where user’s custom interactions on additional interactive elements were being tracked. The average viewability rate for rich media ads was at around 46%.

Enlisting here are some benefits of rich media ads:

• High Interaction Rate. Rich media ads are equipped with video, animations, and other engaging features. More customers interact with these ads thereby uplifting brand awareness and message association.
• More Calls to Action. With rich media ads, you can have different zones to link to your different landing pages, social media pages, or contact forms.
• Larger Space to Provide Visuals and Messaging. Standard ads have limited spacing that you can play with and provide your messaging. With rich media ads (like expandable, pushdown, interstitial, etc), you have much more space to display photos, product range, interactive galleries, offer more calls to action, and engaging components.
• Can Include Video. Video is fast becoming a huge marketing medium on the web. It is important to make sure you have an online video marketing campaign in the works. Rich media video ads are a great way to utilize your video and gain engagement.
• Increased Tracking. With rich media ads, you can track measurable statistics about your consumers. For instance, you can see how many people watched a video, or how many users interacted with your ad. 
• Can include dynamic content (text, image, video). Rich media ads can include dynamic contents (DCO) which can be changed on-the-fly based on the campaign’s targeting strategies. For example, the imagery or copy text can be changed based on the target user’s geo-location.

So, move forward and take the opportunity to use rich media impactful advertising for your next campaigns. We at Escape are here to help build your rich media ads and execute them with Sizmek Ad Suite – the one-stop platform for creative tools, DCO, campaign management, and advanced reporting.

---