Rich media technology vendors such as Viewpoint, PointRoll, EyeWonder, Klipmart, Eyeblaster and United Virtualities are transforming themselves into creative services firms as a result of the standardization of rich media formats and agencies' eagerness to outsource the production of increasingly larger and more complex display campaigns for agencies and clients without the resources to do the work themselves, writes ClickZ.

"The heart of what we do is technology, but we have to overlay that with service," said Doug Mcfarland of Eyeblaster.

The amount of production required varies from campaign to campaign and agency to agency. "We'll take it from 100 percent if people need the help, [down] to 50 percent, but it'll never be less than 25 percent of our involvement," according to PointRoll's Chris Saridakis.

Viewpoint, which bought Unicast and its ad formats last year, said agencies sometimes just hand off their raw storyboards.