Rich media firms Unicast and KMGI Studios joined forces this week to begin a co-marketing effort promoting their products to clients.
KMGI will create, promote and sell Unicast's almost full-page superstitial ads to its clients while Unicast will promote KMGI products and services. Unicast will operate and serve the superstitial campaigns.
Allie Shaw, vice president of global marketing at Unicast, New York, said the companies plan to support each other through marketing and sales efforts, including co-promotion through their Web sites and company literature.
KMGI's sales force will learn about the superstitial format, and the two companies will share market research, she said.
“We [KMGI and Unicast] realize we're the two major rich media players,” said Eric Kavanagh, senior vice president at KMGI Studios, New York. “We wanted to get together to vanquish the beleaguered banner.”
Meanwhile, Unicast struck deals with advertising networks 24/7 Media and ad pepper media to extend the reach of its format and “essentially solidify that superstitial is a worldwide standard,” for rich media advertising.
The partnership lengthens Unicast’s reach to 24/7 Media's network of 4,000 Web sites. Shaw said ad pepper's advertising network gives Unicast what it needed to integrate superstitials in the European market. The company is also partners with DoubleClick, Engage Media, Engage Business Media, RealMedia, L-90 and Phase2Media advertising networks.
Unicast’s reporting systems are scheduled to be integrated with 24/7 Media's ad serving software in September. 24/7 Media reports it will be able to manage sales, targeting and scheduling of Unicast campaigns within its network as well as tracking, reporting and billing for each campaign.
Unicast and 24/7 Media will work together over the next few months to bring superstitials to the entire network.
Advertisers running superstitial campaigns will be able to keep real-time tabs on their campaigns through research company Dynamic Logic's AdIndex service.
