Rich media soars…when it works

Brands running rich media ads – which offer video streaming, interactivity and so-called ‘expansion’ – have seen soaring clickthroughs, although due to technology issues nearly a third are never actually seen.
DG MediaMind’s annual Global Benchmark Report for digital advertising, analysed more than 600 billion display ads from 47 countries worldwide with a special focus on viewability.
It found a significant correlation between viewability and performance; the 63% of rich media ads that were viewable showed a 54.5% boost in clickthrough rates versus served ads.
In the UK, performance was up in several areas between Q3 2011 and Q1 2012. During 2012, standard banner ad clickthroughs held at 0.08%, the same as the previous report, while rich media clickthroughs doubled (0.28% compared with 0.14%).
Rich media’s stand out performance was driven by floating and expandable ads (2.67% and 0.99%, respectively).
The boost in performance follows a record year for advertising spending in the UK, following events like the European Championships, London Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee. It shows that strong investment in creative of rich media provides strong results.
The most viewable rich media ad formats were floating ads, wallpaper ads and commercial breaks, according to the report, indicating that these highly interactive and persistent formats are valuable for brands using viewability as a key performance indicator.
DG chief marketing officer Ricky Liversidge said: “Before the viewability metric, advertisers did not have a standard way to detect if an advertisement even had the chance of being seen by consumers. The adoption of viewability as a standard metric is another step in arming advertisers with the knowledge they need to measure and execute successful digital campaigns.”