Rich media ads are on the rise. The term rich media was coined to describe a broad range of digital interactive media. Consumers are growing board and less responsive to standard banner ads. Marketers are forced to raise the level of technology and creativity to capture and engage consumers. Ads with some level of interaction tend to get a higher rate of clicks.

Mobile marketing has been a bit slower to catch up to rich media. Interactive ad formats are much more limited for mobile devices but they are catching up quickly as the number of smartphone users continue to skyrocket.

But making a rich media ad possible requires much more complex technology to ensure that all of the ad behaviors function properly, that all of the interactions can be measured, and to serve the ads onto web pages. Every piece of the canvas, from the video play button to the button that allows for expansion, requires coding in Flash that’s made possible by a rich media technology provider like DoubleClick Rich Media. With all of this complexity, there’s also a lot of room for error. So in addition to enabling the development of the ads, tools like DoubleClick Studio provide quality analysis and preview functionalities to make sure that the ads work the way they should.

Here’s an example of a rich media banner ad we created for Greenwood Visitor’s Bureau. The ad serves as a stand- alone media kit. It features upcoming events, a video about the area, Facebook promotion, all wrapped up in their marketing campaign theme.