Top 10 Rich Media Ad Examples For Your Next Campaign

The goal of every ad campaign ever is to attract user attention and make them convert. With the competition being this fierce, this is becoming more and more difficult every day. 

Using rich media ads in digital campaigns can become that missing piece you were looking for to stand out from the competition and drive more traffic to your landing pages.

Rich media enables advertisers to be more innovative, gives more room for experimenting with original, creative ideas, and can significantly add up to better brand recall and awareness. 

Besides, it can be an effective way to cut through the noise in digital advertising.

In this article, you’ll learn what rich media is, how it can help brands succeed, and go through the top 10 examples of innovative rich media ads to inspire your next ad campaign.

What are rich media ads?

Rich media is a digital ad format that contains advanced elements and features that encourage users to engage with the ad content. 

By using rich media, advertisers allow their audiences to interact with an ad by touching, dragging, scratching, swiping, spinning, playing a game, watching a video, and more. 

While text ads sell with words and display ads sell with pictures, rich media ads offer a wider variety of possibilities to make an ad more attractive to target audiences.

‍

Rich media vs. standard banners: side-by-side comparison

Types of rich media ads

Rich media offers a wide variety of formats, but ads can also take many different forms.

Here are some of the most commonly used types of rich media ads.

Banner ads 

Banners are one of the most popular ad formats overall, used both for standard and rich media ads – yet, rich media brings an interactive twist to it. Sometimes referred to as rich media display ads, they often have a fixed size and position on the page/mobile app. According to Statista, ad spending in the banner advertising market is projected to reach US$174.4bn in 2024.

‍

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads, as the name suggests, can be created to slightly change their content based on chosen factors and API integration or manually.

Some examples of dynamic ads could be weather ads (promoting specific products during the set temperature), live score ads (sports games results), or product feed ads (showing current best offers).

Interstitial ads

Interstitial ads are interactive full-screen ads that cover the entire screen of their host app or website. 

This type of rich media ads are designed to appear between content by taking over the screen or at natural transition points. The user always has the option to turn off the ad and continue browsing.

According to AdMaven, interstitial ads have the highest in-app conversion rates: over 20% on Android and almost 15% on iOS.

‍

Video ads

Using video ads, brands can deliver their messages in a way that many people actually prefer. In fact, many brands are and continue to do so as ad spending is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2028) of 6.04%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$241.9bn by 2028.

‍

There can also be different ways of showing your video ads, like floating video ads that cover a portion of the site content for a short period, simply using it in rich media banners, etc.

Gamification ads

Gamification ads are ads that use the mechanics of games to increase user engagement and chances of converting them into customers. Those can range from very simple ones created just for the sake of interaction to giving rewards for completing specific tasks.

The in-game advertising market worldwide is expected to exhibit a steady annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2027) of 9.91%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$145.50bn by 2027.

Floating ads

Floating ads stay fixed on the top of the publisher’s page. A floating ad usually covers a small portion of the site’s content and can be made in different formats, such as previously mentioned video or gamification ads.

According to statistics by SelectMedia, publishers who use a floating video ad in their campaign had an 80% viewability rate vs only 25% viewability in campaigns with a non- floating video ad.

Benefits of rich media ads for advertisers

• Higher engagement rate. Everything delivers better results when interaction is involved, and advertising is no exception. Eskimi’s internal campaign data shows that rich media delivers up to 15X higher engagement than standard static ads.
• Better visibility. The variety of rich media ad types allows brands to stand out with their ads and achieve nearly 100% visibility, e.g., using floating banners.
• Flexibility. Standard banner ads limit the ad space for displaying a message, while rich media allows multiple frames, enabling brands to be more creative and advertise on a larger scale.
• Reduced banner blindness. Banner blindness is a phenomenon when visitors subconsciously (or not) ignore any banner-like information on the internet. Rich media ads contain elements that are more difficult (or impossible) to ignore (changing frames, gamification, sometimes sound) and still grab visitors’ attention.
• Multiple performance metrics. For marketers and advertisers, rich media ads provide valuable insights into their ad campaigns as they can track multiple interaction points. Some of those metrics include impressions, engagement rate, reach, display time, interaction and dwell times, and many more that can help build greater knowledge and improve future campaigns.‍

‍Creative rich media ad examples from big brands

Below you’ll find 10 high-quality rich media ad examples from big brands to better understand how they look and work. 

Hopefully, they will inspire your next effective advertising campaign!

1. Ariel

Ariel, a European brand of laundry detergent, teamed up with Eskimi to launch an innovative ad campaign using gamification.

Ariel used an animated rich media ad to promote its product and share its expertise in the field in an interactive manner.

The ad showed a dirty shirt covered in germs, inviting viewers to “shoot” them and clean it up, referring to how Ariel detergent works.

The ad was designed to instantly grab attention and encourage the audience to engage with it. Once all the germs are killed, the player is invited to visit Ariel’s website for more safety tips regarding clothing care.

2. Trolls

DreamWorks, an American animation studio that produces animated films and television programs, used video ads to create some buzz around the release of the new Trolls movie.

DreamWorks launched more than 550 advertisements on different platforms across 36 different worldwide markets. The company also used website takeovers on various sites like Amazon and IMDB as their main ad creative. 

Their brightly coloured rich media ads enchanted the audience and proved successful, as the movie earned $346 million internationally.

3. Intel

Intel, an American technology company specializing in semiconductor chips, introduced their new sleek laptop to the public by using 3D technology, enabling customers to actually see the best that its design has to offer.

In addition, Intel utilized 360° video in their advertising campaign with hotspots that displayed to customers the differences between their product models.

This rich media campaign allowed Intel to drive massive brand engagement. It attained more than 35,000 hours of content exposure and 413,000 customer visits to the website.

4. Coca-Cola

There’s probably no need to introduce what Coca-Cola is, but the ad campaign that this soft drink manufacturer launched with Eskimi is truly worth a mention.

Coca-Cola has not only made its ads interactive using gamification, but it also took advantage of people’s excitement that arises from the possibility of winning.

The ad, which is a perfect example of highly engaging content, showed a cola bottle and invited to flip the bottle cap in order to win something. Once revealed, the user-player could visit the website to claim their prize.

5. Sally Hansen

To provide consumers with the best brand experience possible, Sally Hansen, an American beauty brand, allowed users to virtually try on their various Miracle Gel nail polish colors.

However, to do that, viewers needed to interact with Sally Hansen’s ads first.

Ads included the image of changing nail polish colors and invited potential customers to try how those colors look on them. Those who clicked “Try it on!” were directed to the brand’s website where they could use a smartphone camera and “apply nail polish on their nails.”

This advertising campaign incentivized consumers to engage with the ad, and earned a click-through rate (CTR) of 0.08%.

6. Sonic

Sonic, an American beverages brand, promoted a summer deal in 2019 that offered 50% off shakes and ice cream slushes after 8 PM. The brand created brightly-colored rich media ads containing a countdown timer starting when the user sees the ad.

The countdown showed the exact amount of time until customers were able to benefit from a 50% discount. Combined with a flavor match quiz, this helped inform users about the deal, how soon before the deal started, and what flavors to try at their local Sonic Drive-In.

This interactive advertisement also included a “Find My Sonic” button so that the consumer could also know precisely where to head when the time comes, earning them a 6.6% CTR rate.

7. Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo developed a Tetris-inspired interactive experience to run together with streaming video content on desktop and mobile. It highlighted their Control Tower feature, which enables consumers to track recurrent charges.

After viewing a short trailer, consumers were given the option to choose an Easy or Hard mode for stacking. 

Next, they had to do their best to fit as many meal subscriptions as possible into the refrigerator. Once the refrigerator was full, customers were given an evaluation of how well they performed and a follow-up message that only Wells Fargo provides the ability to monitor recurring payments with their new feature.

8. Naivas

Naivas, a leading retail brand in Kenya, launched its rich media campaigns with Eskimi, targeting parents with school supplies promotions.

Naivas went with a floating ad that showed a backpack getting filled with essential school supplies. Once clicked, the ad directed interested parents to the Naivas online store.

The ad appeared at the top of the content on popular websites and had a 6.62% CTR, which is six times above the average rate for display ads. It also drove massive engagement of 21% and achieved an 83% viewability rate.

9. Harley Davidson

To announce a new product line in a creative way, Harley Davidson launched interactive video ads. These ads appeared on Hulu as 30-second videos during commercial breaks and were aimed at familiarizing customers with new Harley Davidson models.

Instead of passively watching an ad, viewers were asked to discover the different motorcycle models within the commercial experience. The audience could learn as much as they wanted about each bike before either clicking out or visiting the website to learn more. 

This campaign was a huge success, earning a 9.9% mobile CTR.

10. Nissan

Nissan, a Japanese car manufacturer, used its brand motto “innovation that excites” to craft a successful advertising campaign. Understanding that no demographic is monolithic, especially the Hispanic market, Nissan decided to let the audience decide in which language they want to be marketed to – English or Spanish.

Nissan then created an interactive video campaign that let audiences to easily switch between languages in mid-experience to increase awareness among Hispanic consumers.

The campaign was very well-received and generated valuable insights, also resulting in a significant lift in brand awareness.

Start crafting your rich media ad campaign

Leveraging rich media is a great technique for your advertisements to stick out as it’s recognized to seize the audience’s attention. An eMarketer study also illustrates that brands witness higher engagement levels (around 16.2%) using rich media advertisements compared to static banners.

Therefore, it can be just what you need to grow your engagement rates and ROI.

Not sure where to start? Contact the Eskimi team or book a demo for an insightful tour of the rich media possibilities.