Rich media is still a labor-intensive process to integrate. With the advent of distributed media (media players, widgets, apps), things are getting more complicated, not simpler.

Less time spent on integration is more time spent on creative. Here are two examples of how to simplify rich media integration on the publisher side, which in turn makes things easier on the agencies: 

The Rubicon Project
Rubicon is an ad network optimization system. Publishers drop in Rubicon's code, and through that code, Rubicon serves ads from any number of ad networks (60 and counting) and optimizes for the highest eCPM. Whatever rich media campaigns an ad network is already running can display on the publisher's site, meaning they don't have to do any site-specific rich media integration. And agencies can stop worrying about preferred vendors, lag time for publishers to integrate new vendors and other obstacles. As Frank Addante, CEO of Rubicon, explains, "We don't have any preference to an ad network or a website or any one rich media vendor. Our job is to make sure they're all easy to use and let the best ones win."

Panache
Panache has created the Panache Universal Media Acceptor (PUMA) that is a plug-in compatible with any Flash-based or Silverlight-based media players. For video publishers who have integrated the plug-in, they can receive ads from multiple third-party video ad networks, multiple third-party video ad servers and multiple rich media vendors through just dropping one piece of code. It cuts down on the complication and integration for publishers, which makes life easier for marketers braving video and in-video ads and rich media campaigns. Instead of many vendors connecting to many publishers, publishers (through one plug-in) can access many vendors, servers and networks.

These two are certainly not the only examples of making rich media simpler. But they're of a qualitatively different nature than ad networks plus rich media vendor partnerships, which are important to establish but not as exciting.