Dawn Anfuso: NetShelter recently announced it would eliminate premium prices on all rich media units. How will this impact working with outside rich media providers like Pointroll or EyeWonder or United Virtualities?
Pirouz Nilforoush: Agencies have become accustomed to paying premium rates to rich media providers and our rich media platform simplifies the whole process for our agency partners and gives them the option to decide if the added premium is needed for each specific campaign that they might be working on. This is inline with our overall vision for NetShelter Branded Network NSBN to offer highly customizable brand engagement opportunities on a site-specific basis to agencies and their clients. Agencies will be able to execute several exciting rich media ad formats without the need to pay any premiums, which will most definitely increase their use of rich media for their clients.
We have the capability to produce and serve rich media campaigns across our NSBN publications and in many cases that eliminates the need for our clients to depend on an outside rich media provider. The feedback we've received from our agency clients has been very positive; they see this as a way to actually make use of rich media more aggressively when it comes to executing proposals for their clients. In the past many agencies have been hesitant in fully exploring rich media opportunities for their clients due to the high premiums and we believe that moving forward our agency clients will be able to make rich media a crucial part of their media plans on NSBN publications.
Anfuso: Do any of those firms produce ad units that you cannot and if so what if a client wants to use one?
Nilforoush: The program is not designed to compete directly with rich media providers such as Pointroll or Eyeblaster. It simply provides our agency clients with the option of being able to avoid paying premiums by streamlining the whole process through our rich media platform. Agencies will still be able to serve ad units produced by Eyeblaster and the likes on NSBN publications and are certainly welcome to do so. Through our partnership with CheckM8, the leader in rich media, we are able to produce virtually any kind of rich media ad format while still being able to serve rich media ads from firms such as Pointroll and Eyeblaster.
Anfuso: Do you think your decision will have a domino effect and force other networks to pull back on charging premiums for rich media on their sites?
Nilforoush: It is going to be very difficult for ad networks to not pass the cost on to their clients due to the structural limitations that are in place. Historically it has been extremely difficult for agencies to execute rich media plans across advertising networks due to their non-exclusive relationship with their publishers, which have forced complicated and time-consuming coordination between client, agency, creative shop, network and publisher. Horizontal ad networks work very well while dealing with standard banner ads but when it comes to rich media they have to manually coordinate all aspects of the entire buy from sending Insertion Orders to publishers to implementing the tags and debugging issues that might arise after the campaign goes live. Sites within our Branded Network (NSBN) are exclusively represented by us and that gives us much more flexibility when it comes to executing rich media on these publications. We are able to have a rich media campaign up and running on any of our Branded Network publications within a few hours and all we require from our agency clients is the Flash creative. We have full control over the ad inventory and that really helps simplify the whole process.
Anfuso: The new pricing was part of a new larger rich media platform. What can you offer advertiser now that you couldn't before?
Nilforoush: The new platform gives our agency clients the freedom to choose whether or not they would like to go through a rich media provider or simply go through us in order to serve and execute their rich media campaigns. Agencies are able to save money for their clients and still get the same level of service and support by managing all aspects of their rich media plans through one source.
Anfuso: If you are not using outside vendors how are you producing rich media ad units?
Nilforoush: Through our partnership with CheckM8, we are able to produce and deliver several different rich media formats such as Prestitials, Interstitials, Peel Overs and several others. Our clients no longer have to coordinate things between several different parties in order to get their rich media campaigns on our Branded Network publications. Everything is handled through us and that helps minimize delays that might arise while working with several different parties.
Anfuso: Is there any strategic advantage to rich media; do people interact more with specific kinds of units?
Nilforoush: Agencies are able to take advantage of rich media ad units in order to create much stronger branding presence for their clients. Our agency clients are able to utilize rich media ad units in order to create a more interactive experience and really connect with the audiences of our Branded Network (NSBN) sites. We have constantly witnessed much higher clickthrough ratios on our rich media campaigns while compared to standard banner advertisements and the CTR rates are generally 10 to 15 times higher on our rich media campaigns. Our clients have had great success utilizing our Interstitial, Prestitial, and Peel Over rich media ad units in order to connect with the users of our NSBN web sites and truly impact their purchasing decisions.
Dawn Anfuso is senior editor, iMedia Connection. Read full bio.
