Back in the summer of 2006, Dreamscape Films approached us (the1stMovement) with a very unique idea: A drama-series broadcast exclusively online and furthermore, let the Internet users choose the casts. As Geert Heetebrij and Helmut Schleppi, founders of DreamScape Films, put it:

"Don't scale the gates of Hollywood. Walk around them"

We were immediately hooked with the idea and after about a month of consultations, design and development, we launched the Interior Phase I in October 2006.

Along with that, we launched the world's first completely open, online talent casting call for a drama series. For the next two months, hundreds of actors/actresses flocked to upload their audition videos online to The Interior YouTube group. And out of the hundreds of submissions, the top five were chosen by YouTube users and in December 2006, the 4 main actors/actresses for the drama series were casted online and off to shooting in the rainforests of Central America.

While they were in productions in rainforests, we launched Phase II of the Interior for the cast and crew to post blogs and behind the scene videos to share. And finally, after six months of preparations and productions, the first episode is available through invitation only on the Interior (http://www.theinterior.tv).

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The term "Rich Media" advertising was born around 1997 according to the DoubleClick's report "The Decade in Online Advertising".

The simplest definition of rich media is web advertising units based on technologies more complex than GIF or JPG images and simple animations.

In an article titled "The Evolution of Rich Media Advertising" in 2005 by DoubleClick, out of all the technologies for rich media, Flash dominates overwhelmingly (according to Nielsen/NetRatings, 97% of the ads tracked in 2004 were based on Flash).

The IAB (interactive Advertising Bureau) estimated the Internet advertising revenues for 2006 is $16.8 billion and by 2009, rich media ad units will account for over half of all online display ads by spending, according to Jupiter Research.

As an interactive advertising agency, the chance is you will have to design and develop a Rich Media ad unit sooner or later. Over the past years, we have worked with advertising agencies and Fortune 50 companies to design and develop Rich Media Ads including these Sleeper Cell banner ads for Showtime; this Rainbow Six expandable ad for Ubisoft or Viva Pinata expandable ad; this Age of Empire III full page overlay ad for Xbox; and our latest Forza Roadblock ad for Xbox. We have made plenty of creative and technical mistakes and hopefully the tips below will be helpful to some of you.

• Know the Publishers - publishers are sites (like Yahoo!, IMDB, etc.) where the ads will be seen. Each publisher has its own supported delivery platform and specifications. The bottom line is when you are developing a Rich Media ad, keep in mind that most likely, you will have to develop different versions of the same creative for all these publishers
• Know the Ad Formats - there are currently at least 10 different types of Ad Formats including standard banner ads, Floating Ads, Expandable Ads, Full-Page Overlay Ads, etc. Obviously each of them have their own specifications and requirements
• Know the Ad Delivery Platforms - Eyeblaster, PointRoll, DoubleClick and among other online ad delivery platforms all have their own tracking methods, management tools, as well as Flash APIs or components that developers can use to create the ads. Obviously it's a good idea to know what platform you would be working with prior to the development. As if it is not confusing enough, each platform has its own naming convention for the different types of ads. (PointRoll calls their Expandable Ads "FatBoy", whereas Eyeblaster and DoubleClick (DART Motif) call them Expanding or Expandable Ads)
• Know the Ad Specifications - Different publishers and ad delivery platform have different specifications that creative agencies HAVE to follow. Things you have to pay attention to are the initial file size, total file size, audio format, version of Flash plugin supported (We still had to work with Flash 7 80% of the time), video format supported, etc.
• Know the Schedule - This should go without saying but publishers usually have a non-negotiable delivery date since just like TV, advertisers have to go through media buying companies to purchase time slots and space on various sites. When you allocate your resources and do you budgeting, be sure to allocate some time for the testing and acceptance period (i.e. upload to the delivery platform like Eyeblaster and test all the tracking, reporting code)

Newsweek delcared 2007 as the Year of the Widget and fittingly so, G4 came to us to rework their existed embedded video player and further develop it into a widget that can be shared and linked to other social networking sites.

The original video player has a minimal user interface with minimal features, as you can see at the screenshot below

After a couple rounds of consultations with their in-house design team, we finalized on a new design and a list of functionalities that would include enhanced features such as "Share with a Friend", "Embed this video player", "Play List", as well as the "Related Video" feature similar to what YouTube has. We delivered this enhanced video player in 2 different sizes (small, large) and 2 versions (on-site on G4tv.com with playlist, off-site) in February 07.

The project didn't stop there and G4 came back and wanted to enhance the player even more to match their new redesigned official site and overall corporate branding. The new player will have a redesigned skin, the ability to not only have all the existed functionalities, but it will also be able to accomodate a vertical or horizontal play list, as well as the ability for G4TV to dynamically change the overall color of the player with an easy-to-update XML file.The large, on-site version can be seen now on the G4TV homepage and by the beginning of May 07, they will be replacing all the video players everywhere on G4TV with all the different sizes of the new video player.

Kudos to our Flash team for delivering a solid product and continued success with one of our longest standing clients.