Rich Media Ads – Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

Andy Long

Andrew Long writes:
Personally, I don’t care that much for complicated rich media ads, but then again who am I to judge?

My experience in advertising sales is limited to fairly simple advertising formats. Starting off in traditional media in the late eighties, I sold ads on a series of b2b magazines within the scientific industry – advertisers and publishers alike were rather naive in terms of trying new formats and belly bands and front cover ‘stick ons’ was about as complicated as it got.

Nowadays, we are confronted with an array of ad formats – online is doing better than most and although online b2b media has gone back to simple static designs, the agencies can now put their rather large ‘creative hats’ on for the big business to consumer markets. This seems to be where the work (and money) is in creative design terms and a large group of agencies can now offer a fantastic choice of the latest advert formats and designs to entice consumers.

A recent study by Eyeblaster suggests that consumers are more turned on (in clicking and action terms) by expandable ads of varying sizes and shape. Those formats which encourage an action and offer a visual reaction, would be more successful than those ads which just flashed and did very little to attract attention. The study also concluded that agencies should consider changing images, sounds and positions of these ads for maximum impact.

From a personal point of view, I find this research rather difficult to believe, although my main interest in advertising formats comes from a b2b angle. I spend very little time clicking on ads relating to personal or lifestyle issues. However, this is probably due to the fact that I am forty years of age and have every gadget, toy and impulse buy that took my fancy some 10 years earlier. So, does age play a significant part in the way we react to rich media ads?

One thing is for sure, the advertisers and their agencies like them and it seems that a lot of consumers do too. We’ll just have to keep watching this highly interactive space to find out more!