A Rich Media Primer?

[markd]

Dear all

Like everybody else, I have been seeing a lot of 'rich media' appearing on web sites, mainly as advertising.

I am a bit confused as to how the kind of 'overlay' and 'expanding' ads are constructed. They seem to use Flash as their core technology.

If we wanted to add this kind of rich media to a site how would we go about it?

The big providers of 'rich media' to advertising networks seem to do this using a proprietary server side technology.

Is it server dependant?
Can you achieve this without proprietary ad serving technology?
Is this something which can be deployed on a 'standard' web site/server?

Hope you can set me straight.

Thanks

[Accelerator]

Flash combined with div layers or iFrames I reckon.

Rgds

Accelerator