“The future of brands is interaction, not commodity.” – Hugh McLeod
Imagine yourself surfing through your favorite websites, reading a newspaper online – what are the most common things that you notice? Yes! We can certainly relate to what you are reflecting in the deepest corners of your temporal lobe. They are none other than loads of digital banners and static ads promoting their products, almost making the website itself an advertisement circus where these ads are popping from here and there and absolutely out of nowhere. You would be pleased to know that you aren’t the only privileged ones who are bored of such one-way promotions, even marketers are. Marketers constantly try to develop communication outlets that would not only inform the customers, but also interact with them in an innovatively dynamic way. But is it really implementable? We are not thinking or talking about future here. It is safe to say the future of digital advertisements is already here, and it is indeed ‘rich’ with good news for the marketers and for the first time, for customers too.
Rich Media is the catchphrase of the moment, but we wouldn’t judge if you are still in the dark about what ‘Rich Media’ really means in the current marketing era.Rich Media refers to the use of various technologies to create the eye-catching effects, associated with proper sounds, to provide a two-way communication platform where an user can also participate in the advertisement. It uses advanced technology such as streaming video, flash and other interactive features to interact instantly with the user and has demonstrated itself as a very well-liked and resourceful tool for augmenting customer’s online experience.
You must be thinking that this is still the same advertisements in the end, what is so different! Rich media defines digital advertising in a way that deviates from “standard” display advertising because it is an interactive, engaging, and informational platform, where you can break-free your level of creativity with the masalas and spices of your coding virtuoso. No more boring static or banner ads with numerous information! With rich media, you can have ads that expand when users can literally play, click, roll over, push or even pull to open comprehensive possibilities for interactive content, such as HD video or even the ability to click to make a phone call or fill up customer information.
So, where would you find rich media these days? Are they even available now? Is in-page and pre-roll video rich media? Of course they are. Is Mobile video advertising rich media? Absolutely, Mr. genius. In-game advertising? I can bet on your apparently popping eyes, it is. Podcast advertising? Yes dear reader. The way rich media evolution is headed in the field of online advertisements, as the Internet continues to play more crucial role in the game of branding and customer conversion-increasing tool, it is sure to unearth its way into everything.
In today’s world of media fragmentation, there are many ways to develop ad campaigns that utilize rich media using mediums that didn’t exist even a year ago.ProthomAlo, which merely started as a newspaper where you can just publish ads, has successfully executed rich media in the digital advertisement market in Bangladesh for the first time from last year. With a view to forming top-of-mind brand awareness and increasing website reader traffic, ProthomAlo provided the first glance at rich media in Bangladesh during their 16th anniversary where home page would take over and drive their readers to a Microsite. Featuring their anniversary theme “Bishwa jure Bangla Bishwa jure ProthomAlo” through the rich media, ProthomAlo was able to interact with a staggering 2.5 million people in just over 3 days with an astounding Click Through Rate (CTR) of 1.66%.
Just providing a little glimpse of what rich media can do, ProthomAlo moved towards incorporating rich media in their first commercial client based advertisement, for Bangladesh Power Division (BPD). Rich media was created to promote Bangladesh Power Division fair as a part of their publicity campaign where a reader had to pull the advertisement to be directed towards the intended full-page advertisement. Although this rich media was intended only for the desktop version, it successfully achieved an overwhelming CTR of 1.17% with an interaction level of 66.55%, a very high success rate in term of the advertisement dictionary.
In Bangladesh, we are gone past the days when marketers werein a dilemma regarding the value of creating in-app advertising for users “on-the-go” – it’s now a fact. With the introduction of 3G in Bangladesh, remaining competitive in the advertisement space is increasingly difficult for publishers without using mobile advertisingup to its fullest potential. Although adding graphical contents on mobile without interrupting user experience is a momentous challenge, Prothom Alo went forward with the intention of launching rich media even in the mobile platform in their next rich media advertisement for Vaseline using a sophisticated HTML 5 technology.
The rich media creative for Vaseline, which ran on both desktop and mobile version, served a total of 4 million impressions- 2 Million for Desktop and 2 Million for Mobile and achieved an outstanding average CTR of 2.12 %. Still thinking rich media is just a lavish expense? Take a calculator and compute how much it costs to achieve the same impression on other formats, it is not hard to predict the only answer it is going to be.
What’s surprising is there are still so many platforms rich media hasn’t yet reached. E-mail has been particularlybereaved of rich media advertising due to security issues, Mobile phones with superior Flash could open the floodgates to rich media for mobile platforms. Prothom Alo has made great strides in providing audiences information and interactivity through rich media in all of its existing forms and it looks all set to break the barrier in innovation by integrating more features in terms of rich media in the context of Bangladesh. Prothom Alo’s transformation more a mere publisher of print advertisements to a complete strategy and creative solution maker of advertisements has managed to attract long queues of potential clients who want get their hands on rich media. If you are also thinking of integrating rich media in you stock of marketing strategies, I am sure by now you know where to go.
By
Amitabh Guha Roy
