Excite Now Serving Rich Media Advertising

Excite Inc. said it is now accepting and serving rich media advertising on the Excite Network.

Advertisers can use a range of rich media advertising using Enliven technology, from daughter windows to ads with audio and video, to deliver fully interactive ads allowing consumers to purchase merchandise, request product details and interact with the advertiser’s brand directly within the ad.

The Excite Network, citing figures from MediaMetrix, said it reaches nearly one third of American consumers on the Web.

“Providing a great consumer experience is fundamental to Excite’s business,” said Ben Addoms, executive vice president-sales and account management at Excite. “Through the SpeedSelect technology of our subsidiary MatchLogic, we can now send rich media advertising to users with the appropriate connection speed, virtually eliminating slow download times for consumers and allowing us to effectively deliver rich content, such as video and animation, for advertisers.”

FirstUSA, Lexus and CareerBuilder.com already have launched rich media campaigns on the Excite Network, which includes excite.com, webcrawler.com, classifieds2000.com, and the co-branded search and channels on Netscape’s Netcenter.

“Excite is the first portal to truly embrace and promote rich media advertising. Their acceptance of the complete Enliven solution validates the marketplace opportunity for rich media advertising,” said Hilmi Ozguc, vice president of the Enliven business unit of @Home Network.