NEW YORK: Eyeblaster, which claims to be the leader in rich media delivery and management, has announced the latest additions to its advanced technology platform. This is a new 100K downloaded banner, as well as an enhanced expandable banner.

An official release informs that this is one of the biggest industry improvements to flash banners since their inception and is a direct response to the desire of creative agencies to add more value to banner advertising by increasing interactivity.

Eyeblaster claims that its clients now have a full assortment of choices when preparing an online advertising campaign with access to seven popular rich media ad formats, including the new 100K polite banner, the enhanced expandable banner, floating ad, window ad (interstitial), commercial break (intromercial), full-page overlay and wallpaper ad. This upgrade, the latest in a series since the product was launched a couple of years ago, allows the same creative file to be easily configured in multiple formats.

All widely used rich media formats are supported by the Eyeblaster platform. The company has stated that with its new banner ads it has redefined the perceptions of what is possible with rich media. The new solutions balance advertisers' increased creative needs with publishers' concerns about the effect of heavy content on page download speed. These new banners, added to Eyeblaster's existing formats, provide endless creative possibilities without sacrificing user experience.

New features in the upgrade include:

* 100K politely downloaded banner -- The new rich media banner format allows up to 100K file sizes (standard banners typically 15K to 20K) and will not affect the loading speed of site pages, due to polite and sequential downloading, as well as Eye blaster's proprietary file compression. As with all other formats, the 100K polite banner allows advanced event tracking and data capture.

* Enhanced expandable banner - The expandable banner upgrade now includes support for banners multiple expanding Flash panels and is easier for agencies to develop and manage, and for publishers to run.

* 300K window ad -- This new 300K version of the current window ad format enables full support of rich media interstitial-type ad standards.

Coupled with Eyeblaster's menu of ad formats is a platform offering a completely integrated ad creative approval system, as well as a customised interface for each role in the process-creative, media, or publisher.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings' AdRelevance service, Eyeblaster is the number one branded rich media platform in the industry, and represents more ad campaign impressions than any other branded rich media technology provider. Eyeblaster reached more than 717 million impressions, or 42.4 per cent of the market, in the first quarter of the year including 53 per cent of all unique branded rich media ad units served.