PRWeb has announced significant enhancements to its online news release distribution tool.

The improvements are designed, it said, to make it easier to incorporate multimedia into news releases.

"The news release has evolved into something that is far more powerful than a simple press release: it is a tool that integrates text with multimedia and interactive features," said Jiyan Wei, director of product management for PRWeb. "We decided it was a priority to create a system that made it easy and intuitive for our customers to fully maximize the power of today’s news release through PRWeb.

This has become increasingly important because research suggests readers are more inclined to click through, share and forward information that incorporate multimedia it. According to a report by the Online Publishers Association, over 52% of viewers exposed to an online video ad then took some form of action – a considerably higher figure than ads and web pages without video.

PRWeb is owned by Vocus and launched a UK specific distribution platform in February 2009. The announcement applies to both its US and UK distribution platforms.