avant|marketer: You say that advertisers have voted "No" on Banners, but in an article you wrote entitled Creative Flexibility in the Digital World you state - speaking of the Banner ad - that, "Banners have an important role to play in the mix of ad formats used by advertisers." How would you classify the role that Banners should play in the media mix vis-à-vis the role that screen-dominant, Rich Media formats like the Superstitial should play? How should advertisers think of these two formats in relation to one another?

Dick Hopple: Like Outdoor Billboards, Banners best serve the purpose of a reminder of a more effective message.

For instance, Coca Cola spends the majority of their money on Television, but they also spend money on the Radio and they spend money to put signage in stores with their logo on it.

Banners - like Radio, in-store signage, and Outdoor Billboards - can play a part in delivering reminder messages that serve to reinforce fundamental brand messages. I think the Superstitial, by contrast, will be the core way that advertisers communicate as effectively on the Internet as they do on Television, with that same kind of depth and quality of message.

avant|marketer: Certain individuals have expressed serious reservations about whether the Internet can truly support intrusive ad formats modeled on Television, over the long-term. We recently did an interview with Jakob Nielsen, a prominent Web Usability expert, in which Nielsen categorized the recent evolution of Internet Advertising as following an "arms race" pattern, whereby in order make their message heard, advertisers are developing more and more disruptive ways to reach users. He categorized this as a very risky proposition. How do you answer such concerns? Is the Superstitial complicit in this sort of escalation pattern? Does this pattern even matter?

Dick Hopple: To understand the potential of the Internet and what advertisers want, you have to look at conventional media. You can't just invent this stuff out of thin air, and have a whole bunch of theories.

It's clear that, as the CPM price of Banners has dropped to an equilibrium with outdoor billboards, what many sites have tried to do is to put more and more Banners on the same page. And clearly, one of the things that that does is create clutter. Advertisers, however, don't like clutter. And, since it's the advertiser's dollar that creates the demand here, as advertisers believe the Internet gets too cluttered, they will pull back or force changes on the industry to make it uncluttered.

There have, for instance, been times when the Television networks have tried to put-in more commercial minutes per hour of programming and the advertisers have said "we don't think, therefore, that the commercial minutes are as valuable and we aren't going to pay as much for them," and the networks pulled back and there was an equilibrium reached.

avant|marketer: So the market will itself reduce or - at the very least - regulate clutter?

Dick Hopple: That’s right.

avant|marketer: This is perhaps economically efficient from the advertiser's standpoint. But doesn't the industry also have to be sensitive to the long-term impacts on the user from the deployment of disruptive formats such as the Superstitial? For instance, many users are reportedly frustrated with Pop-Ups to such an extent that the brands that use them, and the reputation of the industry, in general, are being damaged, as a result. Why do you think that the Superstitial, as it becomes more pervasive, won't have these same negative consequences?

Dick Hopple: Advertisers that use Pop-Ups are making the assumption - which I think is a very bad assumption, and one which I think has been disproved in the marketplace - that the user will sit and wait for a Pop-Up ad to load in just the same way that they are going to sit and wait for a web page to load. Nobody is going to wait for an ad to load.

Unlike Pop-ups, Superstitials play instantly because the files are politely pre-cached in the background, using the bandwidth that is available after the user has loaded a page and while the modem is idle. Because they play instantly, they're simply not like other types of pop-ups. That's the first difference.

The other key is that Superstitials are large 100K files, that are sound, graphics, and animation- rich, and they're screen dominant, so they engage the user much more deeply than Pop-Ups. As a result, users, in fact, like them.

avant|marketer: But, Pop-Unders also have number of these features, and many reports suggest that users are finding these to be nearly as problematic as Pop-Ups. You have been a critique of the Pop-Under in the past. What are the salient differences between Pop-Unders and Superstitials, from the standpoint of the user?

Dick Hopple: Look, advertising pays for content. This is why an advertisement paying for a piece of content runs in that piece of content: Television ads run in Television programs, Radio ads run in Radio programs, and Print ads run in Magazines.

There is a bargain that has been made with the consumer, and that is, "I'll pay for your show, if you watch my ad."

And, so, if the advertiser is paying for a specific piece of content, I’m prepared to watch that ad in the context of the content for which it's paying. But, I'm not prepared to watch an ad that's paying for content when I'm not watching that content. With Television I'm not forced to stay in the room and watch ads after I turn off a Television program. Yet, this is, in effect, what Pop-Unders force the user to do.

Unlike Pop-Unders, Superstitials play in the content that they pay for.

avant|marketer: So, the reason that Pop-Unders irritate users is that they breach the rules of advertising etiquette that users are used to from traditional media like Television and Radio?

Dick Hopple: Exactly.

avant|marketer: Notions of correct etiquette have been used, in the past, to explain why various forms of Internet Advertising - for instance, Permission Email - work. But, even in these areas, we have seen user tune-out lead to substantial declines in effectiveness. Do you believe we will be seeing a drop-off in the effectiveness of Superstitials, over the long-term, or do you believe that these formats will deliver the sort of sustainable results that both publishers and advertisers have been hoping for?

Dick Hopple: I think that this is directly dependent on the quality of the individual ads. For instance, there are some Television ads that are better than others, and they get remembered and create stronger brands.

All the Superstitial does is provides the advertiser with a template - an advertising platform, if you will - that allows them to use the creative tools that have been effective for them both on the Internet and in other media. So, I wouldn't expect the effectiveness to drop off, I actually would expect the effectiveness to increase over time, as advertisers and their agencies gain more experience with how to use the Superstitial platform.