More marketers turn to rich media online ads

The use of rich media in online ads increased to 28% in the first quarter, up from 17.3% a year ago, continuing a trend of 10% sequential increases in quarterly activity, reports DoubleClick Inc. By the end of this year, rich media could account for 40% of all online ads, it says.

Click-through rates for rich media ads, which include pop-ups, graphics that move across a page and any ad that includes Macromedia Flash technology, have remained stable since the beginning of last year, and currently average 0.7%, DoubleClick says. But it notes that for direct-response ads, click-through rates declined slightly, to 2.14% from 2.44%. "This could be due to advertisers using rich media creative for branding and thus not eliciting clicks from the consumer," DoubleClick says.