A Personal Rant On Rich Media

I was with a client the other day giving a talk and at the end they asked me to put down a small section of what I was discussing into written form so that they could send it to their clients to help them understand some of the ideas surrounding the developments of Rich Media advertising. I then decided to be lazy and just copy and paste it all into a blog, so here is some of it.....

Rich Media should be viewed in a completely different manner to standard media, It should be thought of as either its own self contained microsite or, even more efficiently, be taken as a modular extension of the overall site. The user should feel that once they move from the advertising to the site that they have not moved somewhere completely different but have just evolved from the advert into the site with a smooth gradual movement. In the best cases a clickthrough itself should become virtually redundant but always available.

In many cases Rich media should be viewed in the mindset that it is a replacement for the clickthrough to the site. Everything that can be done in the site should be done in the advert to build up the relationship and also get the user to invest a little time in the advert as then they will not want to feel that this time has been wasted. Once time has been invested then the likelihood of the user continuing and advancing this investment means they won't drop off in the same manner and also their experience will be fuller. In fact if the Rich Media campaign has been executed successfully then the user should realistically never need to actually clickthrough to the site as there will be nothing more there for them than there was in the advert, unless they are interested in a different sector of the business. However they will ultimately want to do it due to the previous time invested. The only restrictions on this coming from the sites end and from cost (creatives can usually be as large as is wanted but it will usually just cost slightly more I have seen creatives in the past that of 30, 60 and 100 megs!). This then leads onto changes in spend being proportioned more effectively and where niche/micro targeting becomes increasingly important and effective.

Ultimately the advertising can be based around the site itself so campaigns are planned to relate back to certain areas of a site depending on what sector the advertising is for. Therefore the advertising campaigns should be planned on a much longer term and in conjunction with the overall marketing direction of the brand. The site, the print, the tv and the online all being developed simultaneously so that they all work together as one faction and are planned to develop over a far longer period of time.

If you couple this outlook with the new technological developments that are arising in terms of the way adverts are built and viewed (Dynamic adverts, contextually targeted, geo-targeted, fully updatedable content, bespoke widget placements) then planning and buying space will change dramatically too as adverts begin to become ad tags that the content can be updated on within the space of a few minutes and are malleable to the requirements of the client. Space could be bought far in advance and then re-sold if not required for a larger amount on ad exchanges.

Rich Media needs to be approached with the mentality that the clickthrough itself should not be the ultimate result of the campaign. A far more important metric is to look into the interaction with the advertising. To relate this to the difference between Standard and Rich Media I would equate Standard to the sort of advertising that Alan Sugar likes (Picture of product, cheap price in big font, buy now!) and Rich Advertising like a Guiness Advertising Campaign (Subversive, fully branded, working on long term passive memories rather than instant memories which fade far faster). The Sugar manner only works for the user who just wants to click through and buy something, there will be no brand relationship built, no feeling of being a part of a community, no way to create and develop the overall ethos of a brand. Therefore this works well for cheap, mass produced, throw away items but for big brands who are creating some sort of lifestyle this approach is far wider spread but does in no way target the people you actually want and in no way creates brand loyalty in the way that Rich media advertising will.

Online campaigns seem to be looked at as cannon fodder, throw enough mud at the wall and it sticks. This I think is due to the old mentality bleeding over from Print and TV where there was little or no targeting so they way to get the best results was directly proportional to how much time and space was purchased. Online advertising is the first place you can make sure no money is wasted on people who are not your customers and the spend can be applied more effectively so that you give the right people the right experience. It is also possible to use the online campaigns as a precursor to every other part of the advertising as you can get real market research from the online results to make sure you are placing your advertising perfectly for the customer base. This can save huge amounts of the spend and make sure it is used in the most effective manner. This is also true in far precise manners with the overall online campaign that will result from this as within a day of it being live (you can tell what is working and why) and then dynamically change the other creatives in the campaign to optimise every aspect of them.

On the point of interactions in a Rich media creative lots of users are fearful of interacting as they feel the creative will just try and take them through to a site as soon as they click any part of it. Therefore they just don't click as they are busy and don't want to wait for a whole new site to load in, which is why drop off rates are so high on all online media. I personally believe that a good solution to this would be to have all interactivity set out to work on the right click button so the user feels safe to play and interact with content as much as they want without clicking through. Then once they have been persuaded by the advert they then have the freedom to move onto the site to add more value to their relationship with the brand. This however will be a much more long term plan as it will take users quite a long time for this to work its way into the collective consciousness and become the norm.