Rich media is a term that gets thrown around a load when discussing digital ad builds - but what is it?
Put simply, rich media (as a term) covers anything that can be considered outside, or different to, your standard digital advert.
Now, a standard digital advert is 15-30 seconds long and sits under 150k in size. Lots of interaction types can still be facilitated by standard ads, if every effort is made to keep the file size as small as possible (creative and technical tips for doing so can also be found on our blog).
Rich media adverts normally contain heavier elements (like video components) or special features (like interscrollers), or complex ad formats (like expandable units ). Any dynamic creative usage also makes a digital advert a form of rich media because it requires special ad serving.
Essentially, any digital advert that goes beyond a basic 150k (the typical/standard) file size requires the performance of a ‘polite load’.
This means that the load of any rich media advert gets split into two parts, the initial 40k of the ad loads straight away and the bulk of the ad eventually gets loaded when the rest of the website, in its entirety, has finished loading.
So, anything that requires a digital advert to exceed a basic size limit causes it to become rich media and necessitates a polite load.
