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Rich Media – What It Is and When to Use It

Rich media uses video, audio and other elements that can help draw the audience in and engage them in a new way. Rich media can include games, the ability to send a tweet from an ad, or to share the ad with others. It’s a great way to create more brand awareness and affect more sales.

You’ve likely experienced rich media when you’re viewing YouTube videos and a pop-out ad becomes visible due to your mouse movements. Or conversely, you’re on a web page and something pops up that takes you away from what you’re reading to give you some more information.

Rich media is a good way to give your users extra information, as well as allow them to interact with your website more. For example, you could allow them to choose what they’re interested in learning more about with a slide that allows them to choose different topics, which then sends them to a different landing page.

Rich media used to be done with Flash but now it’s important to use HTML5 because that will work across all devices. HTML5 enables you to build better banner ads that will get more attention and work better for the user than traditional static banners – and far better than Flash anything.

Types of Rich Media Ads

There are three types of rich media ads: in-page, out-of-page, and in-stream ads. An in-page ad is usually inside a rectangle on a particular webpage. An out-of-page ad is a pop-up or floating ad that will expand if you move your mouse over it. CNN.com uses a lot of these. A streaming ad usually appears as a video that atomically comes on if you do certain actions on the page; you can see those in action on  elephanthournal.com. These types of ads are great for unleashing creativity and ending ad blindness.

Advantages of Rich Media Ad

• They Let You Be More Creative – Rich media ads usually have images that move or video, and allow for interaction from the viewer such as clicking on the ad to see more, to play a game, or to do some kind of action that gets results. To get an idea of the type of ads and interaction you can create using rich media, look at this rich media gallery: http://www.richmediagallery.com/adtypes
• You Can Get Mobile – Flash doesn’t work on mobile but HTML5 does. You can create amazing mobile-centric ads using rich media. You can create wonderful interactive games and other fun ways to get your brand information out.
• Combats Ad Blindness – Because rich media usually involves moving visuals, as well as sound and interaction from the user, it can help eliminate the ad blindness most internet users experience today.
• Scalable – These types of ads can sometimes be more expensive to create, but you can run rich media ads on your website without too big of an output while being in control of your budget at all times.
• Easy to Measure – These types of ads are easier to measure in terms of effectiveness than other types of ads. You can track far more with rich media than you can with regular banner ads which only allow you to track clicks.

Don’t let the technology frighten you. You can use Google to create rich media ad code that you put on your website. You can also use a builder to create these effective, interactive ads and engagement tools easily.

Link to builder – http://www.richmediaads.com/