Dean Suarez-Starfeldt Biggs|Gilmore Vice President, Director of Strategic Planning

People have proved to be more than willing to actively engage with consumer brands online. The only catch: we can't suck as marketers. The best online experiences create immediate value for the user and facilitate a conversation – whether literally or figuratively.

At Biggs|Gilmore, we believe one of our best tools for that kind of engagement is rich media. It allows us to offer a complete brand experience within a banner – as opposed to traditional online media, which at best results in a teeny-weeny portion of viewers clicking through to your Web site.

Let me give you an example. For one major CPG client, we used a PointRoll Bad Boy to deliver a nostalgic video to women about baking with their moms. The flight ran just before Mother's Day. While the unit was designed to conjure up fond memories, it also allowed users to send a thank-you e-card to their moms and then download recipes to relive the experience with their own kids – all from the banner.

This self-contained experience wasn't just a "light" version of the Web site or a "teaser" for what could be found there. It started the brand conversation around memories, mothers and children; provided a great mechanism for pass-along; and put product recipes in the kitchen. And we didn't have to rely on click-thru to provide a full brand experience. The PointRoll unit allowed our brand to have a fairly robust presence on our consumers' terms and turf.

In that sense, rich media can conceivably serve the same purpose as a microsite – with functionality from video and gaming to e-mail alerts and data collection, the potential is here. Think about it that way, and the possibilities become endless. And when you're coming up with creative solutions to your clients' problems, isn't that kind of freedom priceless?

The Future of online advertising is right around the corner. Pointroll AdPortal will launch in June 2007, changing the face of online advertising as we know it. PointRoll has taken the expertise gained from leading the industry and used what we have learned to develope the one stop shop for all things rich media. Deisgn, traffic, manage and report on your campaign from this all inclusive interface.

The only ad serving platform built for the broadband age with advanced Web 2.0 capabilities, AdPortal is designed to build and deliver high-impact, interactive rich media advertising with today’s marketers in mind. All PointRoll creative tools, media tools and ad serving functionality are combined into a single, powerful interface that allows total access to all aspects of your campaign. AdPortal offers advertisers, agencies and publishers unprecedented flexibility to quickly, accurately and intuitively build world-class online campaigns, managing them from start to finish and providing extensive reporting and analysis from a single location.

So what are you waiting for? Join the rich media revolution today.