Tips on Marketing Your Own Site

Utilizing the Power of Rich Media for Greater Marketing Effectiveness

Online marketers and webmasters have sought to increase the effectiveness of advertising by experimenting with a host of web technologies known collectively as Rich Media.

Over the past several years, rich media has proven to be a popular and effective tool for online advertising. Though the term can be difficult to define, rich media technologies generally exhibit at least some of the following characteristics:

• User Interaction

• Advanced animation

• Audio and/or video

The earliest application of rich media was the incorporation of GIF animation in advertising banners. The attention-grabbing motion generated by this technique boosted response rates and led to the development of additional methods to make images more dynamic. While the potential for creativity keeps expanding, questions about practicality and effectiveness linger.

Rich Media Technology

The most-commonly used Rich Media technology include: Plug-In based (Flash/Shockwave), Javascript/DHTML and Streaming Media (Audio/Video)

The Plug-In based varieties of Rich Media are among the most prolific and most impressive-looking Rich Media technologies on the Web. Flash is used to enhance everything from banner ads to entire websites. Technically speaking, this Macromedia product is a proprietary vector-based graphics file format employed to display two-dimensional, interactive animations on a webpage. Shockwave, for its part, allows multimedia objects to appear on Web pages and supports animation, audio and video. Users must install the free Shockwave plug-in to view Shockwave objects.

JavaScript is a scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. JavaScript allows designers to do things like create interactive calculators or games on a site, detect a site visitor's browser type, store cookies on users' machines, and validate form data. DHTML or Dynamic HTML, is a proprietary Microsoft format. DHTML is employed by Web designers to allow for morecontrol over future changes to various aspects of a site, such as placement of page elements, or fonts.

Audio and video content is most often viewed online using a technology called Streaming Media. It refers content that is downloaded to the user's computer while they are viewing it. Web Audio is typically experienced through a plug-in based media player or enabled by Java, a Rich Media technology that does not require plug-ins. Web Audio, which can be heard via websites or in email, is activated with a prompt (click to hear this), or simply streams. Web video has a long way to go before its quality meets the standards set by the general public; however, it is often a component of Web media. Typically, Web video is viewed and delivered in either 'streaming' form or downloaded as an executable file. Streaming video often requires the use of plug-in based software such as Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, and Apple QuickTime.

Online Marketing Vehicles that Incorporate Rich Media

Rich media can be used as effective marketing tools if incorporated in the following online marketing vehicles: banners/badges, interstitials, in-stream ads, e-mails, floating ads or even a small section of your website.

Rich media banners and badges provide advertisers with a way to present additional content and interaction within standard ad sizes, including skyscrapers and rectangular units. With several different technologies available, rich media banners and badges offer a great deal of flexibility. And according to empirical studies and anecdotal evidence, they can also lead to significant increases in both branding and direct response metrics.

Interstitials are ads that play between pages on a website, much like a magazine ad is placed between pages of a magazine. There are several different takes on the interstitial model: some play in the main browser window, while some play in new, smaller windows; some are pre-cached, while some stream ad content as it plays; some provide the ability to create very rich ads, while some focus on smaller, faster-loading ad content. But whatever the format, nearly all interstitial ads perform very well on the basis of both click through and branding. The most popularly-used interstitial is the pop-up window.

In-stream advertising refers to ads which are contained within a content stream -- these ads are the web's equivalent of TV or radio ads. The ads can appears before, during, or after the streaming content, and can be targeted and reported on just like any other form of online advertising.

As opt-in commercial e-mail becomes more popular, online marketers are looking for more creative uses of the email environment. By creating compelling e-mail experiences, they hope to better convey their message and take advantage of the "viral" effects of email marketing, with recipients forwarding the e-mail to their friends. Most of the early efforts in this area have focused on bring audio and video presentations into user's in-boxes.

Floating ads represent a somewhat ambiguous category of Rich Media marketing, in which an advertiser is given the license to have their advertisement move across the web page that hosts that ad. This can include DHTML sponsorships, in which advertising objects "fly" across the page on a pre-set course; cursor sponsorships, in which the cursor turns into an advertising image; and scrolling ads, in which an advertisement moves up and down the edge of a page as the user scrolls up and down the page.

Guidelines on Implementing Effective Rich Media Marketing

It's easy to make attractive marketing material that utilize Rich Media tools. But what the webmaster and the artist should consider first and foremost, is how that material could be effective in its marketing purpose.

First, look at who you are trying to reach and where these users are online. Then, think about what the technology can and cannot do, and how it can help you bring the website to those users while enhancing their experience. Rich media can be very effective, but be wary and avoid using technology just for the sake of showing it off. An online marketer may find that rich media can hinder a campaign's goals for a variety of reasons. For example, an information-seeker may find rich media too cumbersome and slow loading. (Unless of course the rich media you employ allows for faster delivery and user interaction with the product.) Even on the consumer front, marketers must be careful not to underwrite the value proposition, but rather leverage rich media technology to enhance the value in the eyes of the consumer.

We should also take a look at the changing face of the masses' tech-savviness. Webmasters and marketers who like to employ such rich media tools as pop-up windows may find out that this new found savvy has made users more aware of how to use the internet in their favor and thus, they are now, more than ever, aware of ways around online marketing communications. Marketers must therefore accept this high level of consumer control in order to reach out to these audiences - not encourage them to switch off.

Consider also the user and site resources. Some publishers can't take any rich media while others accept it all and certain users have limits, depending on their bandwidth/connection speeds, that can vary how much and what kinds of rich media they can handle. This impacts what rich media a marketer may wish to employ, if any. Some forms of rich media require plug-ins to be installed in order for the content and message to run properly. If you are targeting power PC users, this may not be a problem as the user may already have the required plug in. But if you are targeting a less tech-savvy audience, this could really hinder their experience and in a worst case scenario crash their computer. Keep in mind, when evaluating what types of rich media to use that quite a few of the streaming content providers can and will work with advertisers to take a digitized TV spot and customize it to their audience.

Obviously, we must not forget about your marketing objective. Some units are better suited to data capture, while others are better for surveys and user interaction, and others yet may be better suited to streamed messages. Carefully evaluate the objectives and weigh them against the inherent advantages and disadvantages of the technology you are considering, and you should have an effective tactical strategy that will meet your objectives and enhance the user's experience.

There is no doubt that compared to a static html marketing tool, employing rich media is a more "sexy" way of getting your message across, and they do have the potential to make banners, pop-ups, and other visual marketing tool an altogether more powerful advertising media. But marketers should realize that at the moment, there seems to be a bit of over reliance on the technology at the expense of innovative and genuinely creative advertising ideas to go with it. At the end of the day, rich media won't sell your product, ideas will.

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