For once, my post won't be around social media, neither brand content nor digital innovation. Today I am sharing a very nice online media campaign, very well executed by my friends from Duke. They did a great job for Nissan Qashqai.
Have a look today on French Yahoo and Msn, and click on the banner, to get the full visual experience.

A permanent link for the demo here.

As Martina says "either you create online media that make the difference, or you just invest your money somewhere else" !

Nice to discover interesting content via Twitter. Yesterday, for example @_RGA posted about this rich media banner that profiles your tweets and gets back to you with the reccomendation of the ideal Volkswagen for you.

To promote its website on its last and highly longed-for fashion show, Victoria's Secret put a massive and rich widget forward.
Loyal to the site it represents (fully developped in flash, with tons of materials), it offers a lot of content with videos, pictures and news feed.

I am convinced widgets could be a very good opportunity for brands, but they are too often used as shallow gadgets, with no marketing purpose, or just as an excuse to show your brand is up-to-date ...
Even if this one from Victoria's Secret offers nothing innovative, it is well designed, and it can rely on the aspirational strength of the brand.

One of the things i like the most about the digital work coming from DoubleYou is how they integrate storytelling in their advertising campaigns. Eight or nine years ago they established themselves as one of the most brilliant interactive agencies in the world, only being regrettable the fact that the medium itself (in Spain) wasn't mature enough so i always had the feeling that DY was ahead of his time.

Years later, they are still doing great things but they've managed to export all their digital knowledge in a more strategic mood, trying, being a digital agency, not to limit themselves in a 17" screen. And because of that they created this clever trap done like if it was a physical banner ("it looks like this but then i roll over it and happens that") for Port Aventura (a huge theme park in the Northeast of Spain) and its Halloween campaign in 2007.

They built a wood stand and by the name of "Interactive Test for Cowboys" they simulated that it was another attraction in the park where the users could test their skills as a cowboy.

Being one of the most extraordinary uses of Papervision 3D i've ever seen, in this campaign done for Cadbury Schweppes Spring Valley (by George Patterson Y & R Melbourne + Digital Pictures Melbourne) you're elected to receive one package in which you'll find what is called a Neglected Sensible Shelter, a sort of Tamagotchi creature you have to feed with Spring Valley products.

A car for rich people promote with rich media. Excuse my silly joke, but this is actually what MediaPost points out today talking about a new online campaign Mercedes is about to launch in the US to promote its R-Class luxury vehicle.

The online agency which designed the ads is Critical Mass. They created a virtual avatar which enters the screen to delivered tailored sales pitch as a user clicks an ad. The innovative rich media will appear on Edmunds.com and ideally it will help generating a more engaging online experience. A micro-site will of course support the campaign.

I must say I'm always a little bit skeptical when I see things moving around my monitor but, of course, in this case things are different since the avatar shows up only if the user clicks on the ad.

According to Robert MacMillan of the Washington Post, users are not annoyed by floating ads (but he is). The journalist talked with a few publishers and advertisers who explained customers haven't complained about this form of rich media moving around the screen. Pop-up and pop-unders are perceived much worser they said.

I tend to think people hasn't complained over floating ads just because they haven't been asked the right question...

McDonald's is running a six weeks online campaign to promote its new Fruit & Walnut Salad and target African-American women. ClickZ reports the creativity is by ImagineThat which together with McD's multicultural marketing agency Burrell, developed a series of engaging rich media that include a quick and easy gaming mechanism.

The first results are pretty good despite the rather intrusive format the food chain has decided to use. In particular, McD is using the United Virtualities' Ooqa-Ooqa branded-browser takeover which replaces the page standard navigation with a McDonald's themed navigation. This format is exclusively running on Bet.com however, once again the only supported browser is Internet Explorer so I cannot see how this technology works :-(

rmg:connect Australia has developed an interesting campaign for Kellogg's Nutri-Grain. It' a rich media ad with an advergame inside. As Ashadi Hopper, creative director at rmg:connect, explained me, they have transformed a standard banner ad placement, which would normally give an advertiser maybe 30 seconds of exposure on a page and a rather static engagement with their audience, into a rich entertainment platform that keeps the audience engaged with the brand for three to five minutes at a time.
The game can also be played following this link while if you want to see the banner in action, visit Eyeblaster's showcase. Too bad it doesn't work if you have a Mac.

On Mediapost Joel Gehman (senior vice president of client services for Refinery) writes an interesting column about the role of rich media in online brand marketing.
Nowadays banners still hold a relevant position in media planning, but in the near future they will be abandoned giving space to higher interactivity, which means rich media will take the lead. As Gehman sees it, rich media create a great brand impacts, banners are no longer able to deliver. On the other side, in the online advertising world, search no doubt works to provide immediate results, that's why he suggests to spend online advertising budget on only two things: search and rich media.

I tend to agree with Gehman, I just would like to add rich media will prove successful if we keep them "simple" in the sense we don't make them too intrusive like, for example, floating ads are. Rich media can create excellent online experiences and deliver the brand messege, but if they become annoying than the negative effect affects the brand perception also.

In 2004 rich media advertising accounted for less than 10 percent of all online advertising. Despite the fact there is always a lot of talk about this solution and the growth of broadband Internet access, investments are still limited. But the situation is going to change soon. A new white paper by eMarketer Rich Media: At the Tipping Point expects revenues from rich media advertising to reach $2.2 billion by 2008 (in the United States). The paper, which is sponsored by Advertising.com, can be downloaded for free (opens .pdf).

Among the interesting stats the paper presents, I think the online advertising effectiveness should get particular attention. If compared to traditional banners, rich media usually obtain better click-through rates (look at page 7). Unfortunately, "better" is positive qualification in a comparison, but appears rather disappointing if you look at the rates from an higher perspective. According to Doubleclick, rich media accounted for an average 1.17 percent click-through rate in Q3 2004, which is surely "better" than the 0.20 percent of non rich media ads, but it's always a very low percentage. Sure, you'll tell me online advertising is also about branding, but yet, 1.17 still looks very low to me.

Eyeblaster has introduced the VideoStrip ad format, a teaser video within a banner unit that quietly grabs users' attention and enticing them to interact. Upon rollover or click, the video expands to its full size, remaining perfectly in sync as it fills a full-sized expanded panel. User interaction with the VideoStrip also triggers the audio within the ad.

PointRoll instead has announced the launch of FoldOver a new ad format positioned in the upper corner of a publisher's page. When a user initiates a mouse-over, the ad visually folds over the page, exposing close to a full-page ad. According to Pointroll's press release, the FoldOver has been already used with satisfaction by Audi in support of the A6 campaign.

Rich media ads are becoming more and more important in the marketing mix, as the new 44 customers acquired by Doubleclick's DART Motif confirms.

Kia Motors is launching a rich media campaign to promote its Kia Sportage SUV. Revolution reports the ads will run for a month on Autotrader, Fish4Cars and eBay. As it happened last year Kia is taking advantage of Eyeblaster's overlays, created by E3M Media.

NYTimes Auto section gets "richer"

Video ads innovation for Pointroll

Yahoo! promotes British Airways

IAB: call for feedback

Fuji quiz: do you like it?

Rich media, poor message

Rich media: what's next?

Tangozebra releases rich media plug-in

Rich media: don't become fashion-victims

Eventually the Rich Media Guidelines

Rich media wars coming on?

Broadband spurring the use of rich media

Rich media missing standards

Flash-based advertising: a devil's idea?

Rich media is growing and growing and growing and...

Rich media use will triple in 2004

It's rich media time (maybe)

Successful Pointroll

Reconsidering pop-ups

IAB looks for feedback on rich media

Eyeblaster goes big

Rich media always popular

Chrysler Deploys Interactive for Crossfire

Volvo picks Flashtalking

Rich media for MINI

How effective are rich media?

The Hulk promotion online

Size Matters

Online advertising has a bright future

Bigger is better

Online advertising: a nightmare?

The future of online advertising

Nike named Advertiser of the Year

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives