Re: Defining Rich Media banners for the purposes of Pricing

From: Lisa Wenninger <lwenninger_at_solbright.com>
Date: Mon 22 Jan 2001 13:21:07 -0500

MARK TARBATT <mark.tarbatt_at_eircom.net> WROTE:
> I wonder could I have a little bit of assistance from
> your list with regard to arriving at a satisfactory
> definition of what exactly constitutes a Rich Media
> banner?
>
> Currently words I use to describe rich media include:
>
> A banner advert that is streamed, is greater than 12k
> and includes audio, but is not a .gif or .swf file.

Hi Mark--

My first question to you is, why do you not consider
Flash to be rich media? Depending upon your ad server
and how the advertiser produces and submits the
creative, trafficking a Flash ad can be one of the
trickiest of all.

You stated two justifications for a higher price for
rich media:

> ...there is more work involved in serving the campaign
> and the response rates are much greater therefore the
> publisher should be paid more.

(First of all, pricing should be based upon demand, but
that's a different debate.) Based upon your reasoning,
an argument can be made that HTML ads should also be
considered rich media, as they provide interactivity
(typically leading to increased response rates) and
definitely require more work to set up in the ad
server.

One of Solbright's products, AdTraffic Manager,
automates the processing of online ads for a publisher
by performing validation and error-checking on incoming
creatives. For our purposes in designing systems and
supporting the online advertising industry, we define
standard ads as GIFs (both static and animated) and
JPEGs, and rich media as virtually everything else.
Most all media types except GIFs/JPEGs involve some
type of HTML (and/or JavaScript), which automatically
increases the complexity of trafficking, so we use that
as a differentiating factor.

Lisa Wenninger
Director of Product Management
Solbright - http://www.solbright.com
212/696-9300





Received on Mon Jan 22 2001 - 12:21:07 CST