DoubleClick Aims to Give Deeper Insight into Rich Media Effectivness

A new reporting function available to customers of DoubleClick’s DART for Advertisers will enable them to more deeply probe the effectiveness of their rich media campaigns.

DoubleClick is touting the free report, called Spotlight for Rich Media, as a way to precisely correlate rich media metrics with conversions.

DoubleClick VP of Advertising Products Ari Paparo said most advertisers have found rich media campaigns yield better results than static forms of online advertising. Proof of this is the amount of money being spent on rich media campaigns, he said.

However, advertisers have generally been unable to determine which specific parts of the rich media campaigns were truly effective in creating sales and which were mere “eye candy” that attracted viewers but didn’t lead to action, said Paparo.

“What’s never been done before is to look, on an ROI basis, at how individual creative elements in a rich media campaign perform,” he said. “We’re spending all this money building very complex creatives and we really couldn’t measure in a reliable fashion, prior to this report, what elements of a rich media creative are turning into what conversions. Much of the investment in rich media is based on inference.”

With the Spotlight for Rich Media reports, advertisers, media planners and agencies will be able to track each interactive element in a rich media campaign, “trace it all the way through conversion” and be able to peg dollar amounts to it, said Paparo. “You never had this insight before,” he added. “It’s an industry first.”

Paparo said DoubleClick cannot reveal specific advertisers that have tested the new report but he said Starcom USA participated in a “very successful case study” using Spotlight for Rich Media. “One of their advertisers used it on a campaign and got clear insight about the overwhelmingly strong effect of watching video � on conversion,” he said.

In general, the report will be more accurate with larger campaigns, said Paparo. However, he said “one of the factors that really matters is how active the interactive elements are. If you have an ad that has 30 or 40 different events, that’s probably slicing the pie too thin.”

While the insight provided by the new report will definitely be of interest to online retailers, it will also be valuable to brand advertisers whose sales are not ordinarily completed online, said Paparo. For example, automotive and financial businesses want to learn about interaction and engagement with their rich media campaigns, he said.