Which Rich Media Type Works Best?

SEPTEMBER 14, 2007

Online video is flashy, but not all sites support it.

Online video gets all the attention these days, but consumers actually spend more time with online promotions and coupons — 30.8 seconds versus 16.26 — according to PointRoll's "Entertainment Performance Analysis: The Big Picture of Online Advertising" report.

The firm drew report data from entertainment advertising campaigns it delivered. These included campaigns for movies, DVDs, television shows and video games.

"More and more, entertainment advertisers are starting to embrace rich media as a key vehicle for ensuring online advertising success," said Chris Saridakis, CEO of PointRoll, in a statement.

The fact that consumers spend more time with promotions and coupons than online video makes sense since the only action required of most video viewers is to press play, whereas filling out forms for promotions takes longer.

Similarly, the interaction rate, defined as the numbers of interactions divided by the number of impressions, is higher for many types of rich media than it is with online video. Nearly twice as many consumers interacted with text messages as with video.

Although it is useful to consider these metrics in a directional sense, they do not speak to ROI-related considerations such as purchases made as a result of exposure to rich media. Branding efficacy is not really addressed, either.

It could be argued that all time spent with rich media constitutes engagement. But is a consumer really more engaged just because a form takes more time to fill out than pressing play on an online video?

As usual, the answer depends on the goals of a given campaign. These entertainment advertisers may have focused mainly on interaction rates, with ROI and other metrics lower down on the priority list.

One thing about rich media is that it is widely supported — even more so than online video, according to an Advertising.com study. This may be a consideration for a campaign that aims to run on the widest possible number of Web sites,