Sprout Launches Tracking of Flash To Help Evaluate Widgets and Rich Media Ads Performance

Today at Adobe MAX 2008 conference Sprout debuts a totally new idea that is very much likely to change the way rich media ads, widgets, and various social media sites are evaluated and monetized based on their performance. The thing is that the company is launching Google Analytics tracking functionality for Adobe Flash.

The company’s main line of business is providing various engagement marketing solutions to advertisers and publishers. Of course it is understandable that engagement needs to be measured for the company to prove its solutions actually perform as they should to advertisers – hence the launch of the Google Analytics tracking functionality today.

Sprout platform will now offer its customers who rely on the company’s solutions for engaging marketing campaigns to evaluate exactly how their Flash ads or widgets do when it comes to user interest. Specifically, it measures how long a user interacts with content, what actions a user takes within the widget or an application along with anonymous data on user demographics.

It is understandable that Flash-based rich-media advertising campaigns have always been difficult to evaluate in terms of users interaction and conversion rates and this is exactly where Sprout technology is supposed to offer a solution. Obviously, the idea is intended to help marketers understand what actually works when it comes to rich media ads and widgets used for viral marketing on social networks – and enhance their campaigns to ensure better user conversion.

Of course for now tracking will only work for customers using Sprout to create their rich-media campaigns but chances are now that the technology is here similar solutions will be introduced to track Flash performance for other Flash-based solutions. And of course Sprout looks like an attractive acquisition target for larger advertising networks willing to better serve advertisers with a particular interest in rich media campaigns.