Marketing Sherpa debunks the idea that "rich media ads are hot" - ie. advertisers using them more and more. And they get bonus points for mentioning that they were one of the outlets promoting that idea 6 months ago. Here's data from a survey about rich media ads:

                               Dec 2003             Dec 2004
We do not spend on this            42%                  39%
Increasing spending substantially  15%                  11%
Got great rich media results       34%                  34%
Got moderate results               38%                  48%
Disappointing results              29%                  18%

In this article, they claim that rich media ads (i.e. Flash and movies) usage isn't really growing very fast. They also have a list of "worst practices" around rich media ads. Definitely worth a read - but it's only "open access" until Apr. 9.

¶ 4/04/2005