Online advertising is available in a number of formats, such as standard ads (like the annoying pop-ups), rich media advertising and distributed content. Jacqui Boyd of Acceleration Media explains how they work.

Online media comes in a number of formats, and marketers are beginning to develop a sense of how to use the different methods appropriately. From standard ads to rich media to distributed content such as RSS feeds, advertisers have a wealth of options to choose from, each of which comes with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Let’s look at each of them in turn:

Standard ads

The standard ad is the most familiar and probably the oldest form of online advertising. The creative normally takes the form of GIFs, animated GIFs, or JPEG images embedded in a banner.

Typical examples of standard ads include horizontal banner ads which are normally seen at the top of a web page, “skyscrapers” which run vertically along the side of the page, and smaller square ads that can be placed anywhere.

Another common way of presenting standard ads is to place them in pop-up windows that open when users view web pages. These windows can be created in any size, but are usually smaller than the web page window.

Pop-up ads can either appear over the web page or behind it (this is commonly known as a pop-under). The use of pop-up ads has been declining because they have become an annoyance to users and all browsers now allow pop-up ads to be blocked.

Users have become accustomed to traditional ads. Recent research shows that users typically glance over and ignore any standard sized rectangle placed at the top of a page above the site navigation bar, as they have learnt that this is likely to be a banner ad rather than a part of the web site itself. As a result, banner ads have lost some of their effectiveness

However, banner ads still have their place in online marketing, as they are easy to produce and publish, do not require that the user has any sort of non-standard plug-in to view them, and work equally well with any standard browser.

The flipside of user familiarity with standard ads is that users who are looking for product information in ad form know where to look and click. Online marketers can use this to their advantage.

Rich media advertising

Rich media ads are developed using multimedia technologies such as scripts, animation, audio and video. These ads take advantage of more advanced presentation methods like Flash, Dynamic HTML and JavaScript, as well as audio and video.

Bandwidth targeting allows rich media ads to be aimed at broadband users and simpler standard ads at dial-up users, eliminating the danger of alienating dial-up users. The pool of broadband users in South Africa is now big enough to make rich media a viable option.

Rich media ads are engaging and grab the user’s attention: they have a response rate that is two to three times better than standard ads. We recommend them to clients for big branding campaigns and product launches where they want to make a splash.

There are numerous formats and variations for rich media ads:
- Expanding ads that roll out when the mouse cursor hovers over the ad and shrink when it is removed;
- Floating ads (also known as eyeblasters or free-form overlays) that are super-imposed over the web page content and move down the page as the user scrolls;
- Advanced formats that engage viewers in unexpected ways, such as allowing the user to fill in a keyword obtained from offline ads for a reward or prize;
- Pop-ups served in a small window while the main Web page loads;
- Transitional creatives, which are full web page creatives that are served in the main browser window between two pages of a website. After a set period of time (usually 5-7 seconds), the user is automatically forwarded to the web page he or she had requested.

Some notes on video

When you present rich media ads in the form of video, you must remember to optimise the quality as well as the file and display size for the bandwidth and PC power that your end-users are likely to have at their disposal. You do have the choice of streaming video or allowing end-users to save it as a download.

The advantage of the latter is that the viewing experience may be smoother and end-users with slower connections can download the video for later viewing. However, users may forget about your ad once it is downloaded and never see it at all. For this reason, most marketers prefer to stream their video in real time, and optimise it for best viewing capability.

The most important format consideration, which directly affects file size, is the bit-rate at which you produce your video. This simply means the amount of compression that is applied when producing the video. All computer video files are compressed to reduce file sizes. The trade-off is that compression affects quality – the more compression, the more blurry the video becomes.

Distributed content

I’ll touch just briefly on this emerging form of advertising, since it is bound to become more important in the future. Distributed content is content which is stored on a central web server and then distributed on demand to other web sites or web content reading applications.

Syndicated content, prior to the internet, involved a writer producing an article, a magazine publishing it and then licensing other publications to use it. On the internet, the simplest form of this model involves one content producer licensing other web sites to reproduce the content. Technology allows the process of syndication to be automated.

RSS

The most popular form of distributed content is the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. The RSS model has three aspects to it: content creation, content publication, and content reception.

Podcasting

Podcasting is another form of distributed publishing. It works in the same way as RSS, except that the content is recorded and published as an audio file, so that the user can listen to the content, rather than read it.

Closing words

The challenge for each marketing manager is to match the campaign to the right form of online advertising. One also has to strike the right balance between getting your message out in a format that the user will notice and ensuring that you don’t alienate him or her with ads that are annoying or obtrusive. If you get this right, you will see the returns you are looking for from your investment in online advertising.