Rich Media Firms Embrace Firefox

Facing a shrinking addressable audience and growing pressure from advertisers, two rich media vendors have built Firefox compatibility into their formats.

Eyeblaster and PointRoll separately introduced new Firefox-friendly capabilities today, reclaiming the approximately two percent of Internet Explorer users and millions of others who have migrated to the browser in recent months. Firefox, which was developed by the Mozilla Foundation, has a total market share in the realm of 11 percent, according to research from management consulting firm Janco.

“Advertisers want to know they are reaching their target demographics, regardless of what browser someone is using,” said Nir Shimoni, Eyeblaster’s VP of product management, in a statement. “Eyeblaster is committed to delivering the highest quality rich media to the broadest audience possible. With the addition of Firefox support to our ad serving, we can assure our clients that they are.”

Eyeblaster can now serve its floating, expandable, polite banner and “window” formats to Firefox browsers running in a Windows environment. Its video clip and commercial break units are still not supported, but can be made compatible on a case-by-case basis. PointRoll said its “Boy” formats now display in Firefox, Mozilla and many Netscape browsers.

Their embrace of the browser wunderkind should also come as happy news to publishers who use Eyeblaster and PointRoll formats. Several of Yahoo’s extravagant homepage takeovers have used Eyeblaster technology. Today’s news should instantaneously expand the portal’s reach for such executions.