The promise of rich media is that it enables more engaging, interactive experiences between consumers and advertising messages. It's so compelling in fact that ideally rich media creative stands on its own as an ad unit and delivers the kind of experience you'd get on a microsite.

As the industry as a whole is figuring out what happens after the click (thanks to comScore for enlightening research on the fact that the click is the tip of the metrics iceberg), and as we try to figure out what engagement means and how we should measure it, the subject is especially relevant as it relates to rich media. Rich media enables so many kinds of cool experiences, but we need to standardize (or try to standardize) how we measure its efficacy. Rich media vendors, widget companies and other players are taking steps in that direction, but there's a burden on agencies to get involved, too.

Rick Corteville, head of digital of the EMEA region for Universal McCann, explains, "Everyone defines engagement differently. Engagement is a series of metrics that boil up into what one would consider an effective brand interaction. Agencies are copping out of the responsibility of defining that and keeping it vague. No one is trying to standardize that and say, for example, that 'engagement is these three metrics.' That's an opportunity on agency and vendor sides to put a stake in the ground and spark controversy. At least it's something other than us just speaking in the amorphous."

Matt Rosenberg at Organic agrees it's a task that we need to tackle, but that it's not an easy one. If it's now relatively straightforward to measure "audio on/off" and "play again" interaction in a rich media unit, for example, what if you could rotate a car in 3D? How do you measure that, or standardize its measurement? Rosenberg concedes, "If you can measure it against a set of standards, it's not new."

Kudos to VideoEgg for pioneering a new video plus rich media format (AdFrames) and throwing CPMs out the door in favor of a CPE (cost per engagement) metric. While there is a long road ahead to determine how to define engagement, and perhaps telescope pricing (depending on how long a user interacted with the unit, whether they shared it, etc.), VideoEgg at least committed to making the metrics jump. Given their favor on Madison Avenue, it could accelerate other businesses to follow suit.