Creating high-end ads for the web

By Gerald Burstyn

     @Home, a leading provider of broadband access to the internet, and Macromedia, a web software company best known for its Shockwave player, will begin cooperating to create rich media advertising for the internet.
    The two companies also agreed to a deal that will pull @Home users to Macromedia’s new entertainment center,  shockwave.com.
    ‘’When it comes to web entertainment and advertising, Macromedia and @Home share a remarkably similar vision,’’ says Tom Jermoluk, chairman and CEO of @Home Network. ‘‘The same Shockwave capabilities that will make shockwave.com a premiere entertainment center will be integrated with @Home’s Enliven technology to enable web-based advertising to be interactive, personal and highly effective.’’
    While @Home is primarily an internet service provider, late last year they acquired Enliven, a technology used to create rich media advertising. Combined with Shockwave--software that allows for interactive video and audio on the web--the alliance brings the promise of rich media advertising one step closer.
     ‘‘They both have a lot to prosper from this,’’ says PatrickMcQuown, president of Proteus Inc.,  a Washington, DC, interactive web design and advertising firm.  ‘‘It’s essentially another source to showcase rich media,’‘ he says, in an environment where ‘‘there aren’t too many places to show it right now.’’
     Though rich media accounts for a minority of web advertising, over 70 percent of interactive ads utilize Enliven technology.
      Macromedia says 87 million internet users have downloaded Shockwave players.
    In a related development, @Home agreed to steer users to Macromedia’s new entertainment portal site, shockwave.com. The site will feature games, cartoons, and entertainment from Disney, Warner Bros.  and Comedy Central.
      At the end of March, @Home reported over 460,000 subscribers and said more than 15 million homes were cable-modem ready. At present, there are an estimated 1.2 million web users wired to cable modems. Analysts, however, say those totals will increase soon. Jupiter Communications predicts that by 2002, 6.8 million consumers will use cable modems. That’s far less than the estimated number of narrowband users--45.4 million--but still represents a 14-fold increase over the total number in 1998. 
     A recent study by @Home found that rich media broadband advertising ‘‘significantly increases brand recall’’ and that over half of viewers who clicked on broadband ads spent from 30 seconds to five minutes ‘‘actively engaging with ad information and the brand.’’

-Gerald Burstyn is a staff writer for Media Life.