"We’ve witnessed a strong resurgence in the display ad market over the past several months, with the number of impressions up 15 percent vs. year ago and average CPMs also continuing to rise," said comScore senior vice president Jeff Hackett. "One of the several drivers of strength in this market has been the innovation occurring with respect to ad units, as larger and more engaging creative ad formats are employed. We are excited to provide our clients with greater visibility into the use of different ad formats and sizes with the new comScore Ad Metrix Creative Summary report."

According to comScore, in April, about 60% of U.S. display ad impressions were GIFs and JPEGs. GIFs represented 14.1%. Here are a couple charts worth looking at:

Banners accounted for 23.1% of impressions, followed by rectangles (22.7%) and non-standard units (22.1%).

Pop-ups and pop-unders now represent less than 1% of all display ad impressions, comScore says. Newer OPA ad formats, such as the 970 x 418 pushdown and 468 x 648 XXL box currently account for 0.1% of impressions.

"In rich media, size is only one component of banner visibility on the site," says Eyeblaster.

"In Standard Banners, by their nature, size is a large component of the ads’ visibility and therefore affects their performance," Eyeblaster adds. "Rich Media ads, on the other hand, have more “dimensions” than two—pixels are augmented by flash, video and expansions that catches the users’ attention. Therefore in Rich Media, size portrays only a part of the performance picture.

A couple of interesting findings from he report include:

- Video improved performance for most rich media ads, by 71% overall

- Expandable strips had the highest interaction rate of any rich media format, followed by expandable banners

"Size is now in the heat of an industry debate, as publishers are offering larger and larger sizes in the hope of increasing the marketing effectiveness of ads on their site," Eyeblaster says in the report. "Advertisers, on the other hand, are faced with options to allocate their budget to either bigger size or other rich media features."

Eyeblaster found that ads that raised awareness of a corporate brand, rather than specific products, had the highest interaction and "dwell rates." More information can be found in the firm’s report. (pdf)

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Google provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to use the templates in the following clip:

One benefit that comes with these new templates is the ability for advertisers to easily display multiple products within one ad. "This feature can also benefit advertisers looking to brand by allowing them to tell a sequential story within the ad, such as ‘Explore, Buy, Save,’ where you could have an image representing each concept," explains Emel Mutlu of the Inside AdWords Crew.

The templates also allow for the easy inclusion of a unique URL for each product included. That means you can have three landing pages instead of one.

Advertisers looking to use videos can upload them to Google’s Click to Play template, and choose starting and ending images, a display URL color, and run the video ads across the Google Content Network.

Like the other templates, advertisers will see a reporting column, "Mouseover rate," displaying the percentage of impressions where a user moused over an ad for one or more consecutive seconds.

Some of these new rich media and video templates however, will track unique interactions, such as play rate. This will be displayed in a new "Interaction Rate" column.

Pennsylvania-based PointRoll is a heavy hitter in the rich media services industry, garnering some 60 percent market share, according to Nielsen’s Ad Relevance. AOL will be leveraging PointRoll’s large sales staff, advertiser and agency relationships, and a rich media team.

The agreement builds on an existing relationship between the two companies, pitting AOL as PointRoll’s preferred portal partner. The earliest offspring of this partnership is NetStream, which is already running ads at AOL.

Financials terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but reports say this is a major financial commitment from AOL. That commitment comes as the company seeks to create the next generation of web advertising through platforms like video banner ads and improved measurement.

While advertisers have questioned the effectiveness of pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads, NetStream’s embedded video player keeps tabs on clicks and plays, with behavioral targeting abilities.

AOL, despite a world of troubles in 2006, has been boosted lately by a smooth and profitable transition from a subscription Internet access model to an ad-supported portal model. When compared to 2005 billings, AOL racked up a 454 percent increase in 2006.

Part of that success is due to a seemingly insatiable public appetite for free, interactive services. The bulk of these online socialites are being dubbed by Avenue A/Razorfish "the Digital Class," between 18 and 24 years old.

"This population lives and breathes the Internet, and seeks differentiation through media, music and online networking," said A/Razorfish’s Jeff Lanctot.

"For marketers seeking to engage with the Digital Class, it’s critical to have a clear understanding of how this group uses the Internet and other digital channels, as well as how they view marketing. The differences are stark."