Rich Media Ads: Definition and Formats

Attracting your target audience is the key to any successful marketing strategy. Accept the fact that buyers today are more sophisticated and do their research online. The Rich Media Ads refers to digital advertising with interactive elements like audio, video, and other multimedia that encourage user interaction. A survey Carried out by the eCommerce Foundation reveals that 88% of the buyers engage in a pre-purchase search. This is a significant number. Marketing professionals must look for innovative and new ways to entice their customers to try out their products.

What is Rich Media Advertising?

Rich Media refers to any digital advertising that includes interactive elements like audio, video, or other types of multimedia, encouraging user interaction.

Rich media allows advertisers and marketers create sophisticated ads with ease. HTML5 allows ads to incorporate multiple layers of content into a single place.

Rich media advertising includes ads that use audio, video, and live streaming. This gives advertisers a wide range of options to deliver their message in a convincing and impactful way.

Rich Media Formats

Let’s discuss the most popular formats of Ads.

1. Banner Ads

• Banner ads, which are most often found on websites, are fixed and usually permanent.
• It is possible to create advertising that is highly demanded by incorporating dynamic elements.
• Most viewers enjoy banner ads because they are simple to make and easy to understand. It is for this reason that so many advertisers and marketers invest in banner ads.
• Affordability is another reason why they are a popular choice for advertising by small and medium-sized businesses.

Benefits

• Cost per impression-High to medium
• Low loading time

2. Interstitial Ads

• Full-screen ads are interactive and cover the entire interface of the site. These ads are placed at natural transition points for websites or during breaks in gaming.
• The ads consist of a unique mix of images, texts, videos and audio.
• They can be locked or unlocked depending on whether the user scrolls the page.
• The majority of interstitial ads fill the entire screen, which provides a clearer view. There are no gaps to let viewers miss them.
• This position is the best for tracking user behavior.
• The user has two choices: close the advertisement and continue or click the ad to reach the webpage.
• Interstitial ads support HTML-5 elements as well as banner videos.

Benefits

• Cost per impression-Medium and high
• Viewability-High

3. Pushdown Ads

• Push down ads will not expand in size like other rich media ads.
• The teaser will be displayed on the website. Users can hover their mouse over it or click on it. The ad will then push the content of the page down to make it visible in full.
• This ad has the main advantage that it doesn’t hide the website content and generates more views.

Benefits

• Cost per impression- High
• Viewability- High
• High loading time

4. Expanding Ads in Multiple Directions

• Advertising is relatively new to the multi-directional format.
• This type of advertisement expands according to its position on the website.
• When a user clicks the ad, it expands to the left or vice versa.
• These ads are still relatively new and there isn’t much demand in the market.

Benefits

• Cost per impression-High
• Viewability-High

5. Lightbox Ads

• Google Display Network (GDN), a display advertising network, introduced Lightbox ads in 2013.
• It is a great option if you want to actively engage your customers. These help grab the attention of customers with multiple images, video or a combination.
• This is a very impressive way to work.
• Initial, the user will see a small advertisement. You can expand this by clicking or hovering over it.
• The next step is to darken the screen and display a lightbox with the complete ad on it.

Benefits

• Cost per impression-High
• Viewability-High

Why Rich Media Advertising is Important?

1. Interaction Rate Increased

• Marketers have discovered that interactive ads are the most effective when it comes raising brand awareness. It also helps to capture instant data, purchase intent, and message association.
• The users’ attention can be caught by marketers offering an activity that will be interesting and fully encompassing.

2. Large Space

• In banner ads, the space available to display your message is often limited. Static ads are limited to one frame. This is even more problematic when they’re viewed on a tablet screen or mobile device.
• Rich media ads allow marketers to advertise at a greater scale, regardless of the device used.
• Advertisers can mix these elements to create a better viewing experience.

3. Brand Awareness

• You may have heard the term “banner blindness”. This phenomenon causes website visitors to ignore banner-like content.
• Advertising is always looking for ways to get customers to interact with their banners.
• Rich media ads are relatively recent, so customers pay attention to them the moment they appear on screen. This could have a significant impact on their purchasing decision.

4. Greater Customer Engagement

Rich media can be a great way to engage with your customers. It is unique compared to any other type of advertisement because it incorporates all of the elements necessary to engage customers.

5. Better User Analytics

• Advertisers have few options when it comes to gaining insights about the preferences of their customers.
• The only way to track user behavior was by using the click-through rate.
• Rich media ads, on the other hand offer marketers a variety of analytics to track and analyze in order to gain valuable insights into their customers’ preferences and dislikes.
• With ease, you can analyze and track different aspects like video and audio playbacks and interactions of all kinds.

6. Fast-Paced, Attention-Grabbing and Exciting

• It is not surprising that internet users have short attention spans these days, given the vast amount of content and options available.
• In this fast-paced and ever-changing environment, advertisers and marketers must work harder to create ads that are interactive and catchy.
• It is important to include video content.
• In this new era of internet connection, the use of video can be considered one of the most effective tools to captivate the customer.
• Video ads are a great way to engage users on video sharing sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, etc.

7. Excellent Performance

• Rich media ads perform better than standard ads when it comes to conversion.

8. No Restrictions on Creativity

• Rich media ads are great because they allow brands to use a variety of formats. Advertisers can use their imagination to create stunning ads that promote their products or services.

9. Wide Range of Audiences

• Internet has reached audiences of all ages and categories. Advertisers need to adapt their ads in today’s highly competitive global market to cater to a specific audience.
• Rich media ads allow you to create ads that are unique for target audience.

10. More Impactful and Get a Higher Rate of Clicks

• Rich media ads have a higher rate of clicks when compared with static ads. You will gain more conversions.
• You will receive more clicks with these interactive and fun ads.

11. Improved User Experience

• Rich media ads are used to avoid forcing the user to leave the website. They make the user interact with the content because they provide a pleasant experience.
• This is good news for marketers and website owners as it will increase the time users spend on their sites, which is an important factor in ranking a site by search engines.

12. Tracking Improvements

• The ads are equipped with all the tools necessary to enhance tracking. Advertisers can now view advanced statistics on users, which wasn’t possible before.
• With the tracking feature you can, for example, know how many people viewed your video ad and for what duration.

Conclusion

Hence, in this rapidly advancing internet age, advertisers have realized that they require users’ experience as much as they require revenues.

Although words and graphics are used in the traditional style of advertising, Rich Media Ads look at the next step in advertising, one that creates user interest and content.

Since more and more video ads are filling the internet, the effectiveness of such ads has revolutionized customer expectations to a level.

Thus, we can affirm that the future is bright for rich media ads, and while they may not totally eclipse traditional advertising, we can easily say that.