Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

82 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
online advertising—has proven, at least, that there is life left in that
little old banner ad.
Jupiter Media Metrix (www.jmm.com) predicts that one third of all
ad spending will be in rich media by 2002. This growing popularity
means that Web sites will increasingly need to accommodate the technology.
One leader in the field is Enliven (www.enliven.com), formerly Narrative
Communications, which was acquired by and made part of the
@Home Network in 1999. Enliven delivers banner ads using its special
server over Web sites that will accept them. The banners do not require
any plug-in, and they are not limited by file size as are ordinary banners.
However, they are more expensive to produce and not every user
will have the bandwidth necessary to support them.
Enliven ads do some interesting and novel things. In addition to
incorporating sound and motion, Enliven ads have the ability to offer
heightened interactivity, directly from the banner. For example, an Enliven
banner could offer a prospect the option to immediately print a
data sheet by clicking a Print button in the banner. Another feature is a
banner that expands into a form that a prospect can fill out and send
immediately (Figure 3.2). Enliven banners even allow prospects to place
an order for a product directly, thus enabling “instant” e-commerce.
Other ways to implement rich media include IBM’s HotMedia technology
and Macromedia’s Shockwave and Flash technologies. The increasing
use of Flash in particular is leading to advertising with animation
and sound, sometimes even online movies. An Enliven competitor,
Bluestreak (www.bluestreak.com), offers on-the-fly technology that allows
advertisers to create, produce, and change rich media ads easily,
on their desktop, so campaigns can be modified in real time. Bluestreak’s
E*Banners expand when the consumer clicks on them, so more advertising
content can be conveyed. IQ Commerce (www.iq.com) promises
to energize ordinary banners with its Click & Stay feature, which allows
prospects to make a purchase from a banner from within a pop-up
window. iLOR (www.ilor.com) introduced a technology in 2001 that
adds a “banner console” to any size online ad. The console allows ads
to be duplicated and be made available to viewers to check later.
The advertising implications of rich media could be significant. A
1999 study sponsored by Wired Digital (www.wired.com) tracked the
impact of rich media advertising for Barnes and Noble, Intel, and Novell.
The three advertisers together reported a 340% increase in click-throughs
with rich media ads.