At a time when successfully engaging customers with online marketing is crucial for companies,  Accela Communications — creator of the AccelaCast on-demand rich media platform — is introducing AccelaCast inBanner, a technology that delivers sophisticated webcasts through the familiar “footprint” of standard banner ad units on publisher web sites.

With AccelaCast inBanner, marketers can engage and interest their prospects more effectively by delivering compelling, on-demand and fully navigational multi-media programs -- up to 30 minutes in length -- accessed via a standard banner ad on websites that their target customers already frequent.

Client campaigns leveraging AccelaCast inBanner are already in action at WSJ.com, Economist.com, ITworld.com and CIO.com and a pilot program run on ITWorld.com showed a 17X increase in the average viewer click rate over non-rich, non-interactive creative units and a 10X increase over industry standard interaction times.

"The concept of delivering a webcast through a banner ad within an editorial environment is quite inventive," reports Ira M. Weinstein, Senior Analyst at Wainhouse Research. "AccelaCast is one of the few webcasting platforms focusing solely on

providing consumers with on-demand access to rich media content, giving companies the ability to communicate with prospects at their convenience and at any time of the
day or night."

How It Works

The AccelaCast inBanner technology uses a rich media banner ad component as the conduit to the full-length program.  Once the banner is delivered, AccelaCast inBanner lets the viewer access the webcast right from the editorial site they were originally visiting because it’s served into the same banner location by the Accela Communications’ content delivery network.  After clicking to start the full program, user navigation is activated and visitors are given full control over how they interact with the content –particularly valuable when that content is more complex or educational in nature.

Bill Reinstein, President and CEO of Accela Communications and a featured panelist at this week’s Ad:Tech conference in New York City, commented, “Visitors to the web increasingly want meaningful content that is respectful of their time, intelligence and interests.  Distributing long-form video communications through banner units with AccelaCast inBanner, places information in the context and convenience of an editorial environment that viewers are most comfortable with.  This translates into increased information absorption, retention and sales action.”

Marketers and creative teams will see resource and cost savings as well as increased reporting power with AccelaCast inBanner since content is easily distributed to multiple sites through an ad server, and the AccelaCast player already has built in navigation controls and other functionality reducing overall development efforts.   In addition, existing corporate or executive video can be easily repurposed for new AccelaCast inBanner programs and a sophisticated reporting function offers real time and accessible campaign results.

Already Delivering Exciting Results & Benefits 

A recent AccelaCast inBanner pilot program hosted on the ITworld.com Site Network showed exciting results.  The audience of IT professionals -- viewing the program to get educated on Blade Server technology -- responded strongly. The average click rate of viewers was 3.44%, or 17 times greater than the average non-rich, non-interactive creative unit average of .2%. Additionally, the average interaction time experienced was 110 seconds, or 66% of the entire program, versus the industry average of  only 11.3 seconds … a 10 fold increase.   Other benefits delivered by the pilot included:

• Full compliance with IAB, ASME and common publisher guidelines for file size, start-up behavior and user controls, so the banner ad component was easily distributed to multiple sites to be delivered in-context through an ad server. This provided independent impression and click-through reporting on the start up activity.
• Real-time & accessible reporting on viewer times and subsequent click- through data via the AccelaWorks web response management system
• Time & budget savings thorough leverage of video previously produced for other purposes -- such as executive briefings and presentations.
• Reduced development from the ability to incorporate media elements into a fully developed player with built-in navigation controls.

To see examples and learn more about AccelaCast inBanner, visit: http://www.accelacommunications.com/products/accelacast/ac_inbanner.html