Rich media ads, including Flash and streaming ads, increase brand awareness for online advertisers better than other online ad formats, according to DoubleClick's "Evolution of Rich Media Advertising" study, writes DM News. "The biggest impact was on ad awareness - recall - and message association, which is particularly important for advertisers," Rick Bruner, research director at DoubleClick, is quoted as saying.

Awareness of rich media ads was 9.0 percentage points above that of the control group, compared with 7.5 percentage points for GIF and JPEG ads, in a second-quarter study.

Message association also rose 5.3 points for the rich media ads compared with 4.7 points for other ads; both brand favorability and purchase intent were 0.3 points higher for rich media ads.

Consumers' brand awareness was highest in the auto, electronics, entertainment, pharmaceutical and travel industries when rich media was used, according to the report.

Automotive and telecommunications companies devoted more than half of their online impressions in 2004 to rich media. Web email accounts accounted for nearly 24 percent of all online rich media impressions, while portals and search accounted for 19 percent.