Real Media Africa, the South African arm of the international online advertising organisation, will soon be a member of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), an organisation which fosters growth of advertising on the Internet.
The announcement was made at a recently hosted technology and client showcase. Commenting on the difficulties facing media planners and buyers, MD Ronan Langford said: "There is a big barrier in the form of a lack of statistical information [about users]."
With IAB membership under its belt, Real Media Africa plans to work in conjunction with auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to provide an accurate depiction of local online ad spend.
Webmaster Ryan van der Merwe debunked the myths surrounding rich media, the term coined to define online advertising or promotions using Flash, form and DHTML banners, Java banners and interstitial and superstitial pop-up windows.
A primary misconception, which Van der Merwe says impacts directly on the move to this form of online advertising, is the size of the applications. Most people assume this form of advertising is significantly larger in file size than run of the mill ads, and fear it will slow down Web site access.
He points out: "A plain text DHTML banner form can be as small as 2Kb."
Van der Merwe cites Web sites belonging to music radio station 5fm and online news provider, sa.internet as successfully running rich media banners
Other Real Media Africa clients include SABCnews.com and soon to be launched financial and lifestyle services site, MyLife.co.za.
Since its establishment in 1995, Real Media has broadened its service offering and expanded on a global scale. Its initial technology offering of flagship advertising management solution, Open AdStream, is complemented by services in advertising sales and media services. Open Agency, a product aimed at advertising agencies, is currently in beta phase. Both Open AdStream and Open Agency are available in ASP or local installation format.
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