Obey banners

Has anyone else been seeing this AWFUL banners everywhere around the internet? Or is it just me?

Seriously. WTF. I see these everywhere, and they're grossing me out. Anyone? Maybe I'm just going to all the wrong sites. I don't know. But I want it to stop.

(This is some brilliant new project by Shepard Fairey?)

They know their target market

I just saw this banner ad on a torrent site.


Really?

Of course I had to push it. Nothing happened other than taking me to some website where I could win a free iPhone and Bluetooth headset. False advertising.

Sadly, this banner will likely get more hits than any one I ever make.

Ironically, I wasn't busy, and that's why I saw it

This morning I was reading an email from a friend, exchanging congratulations on our respective jobs, when I noticed a Google AdWords ad above my inbox.


I thought, What kind of schlock is this? Is that really a convincing argument? Then I thought, Is "schlock" even a word? [Editor's note: Yes. Of course it is.] Clicking on advertising-rated AdWords ad has yielded some real gems in the past, so I went for this one.

I was pleasantly surprised with the result. Think Tank 3 is a very small ad/branding agency out of New York. Although I don't care for the name or positioning as a "modern day think tank", they actually have a pretty cool style. Very reminiscent of Howard Gossage, sort of that voice of the intellectual small guy that can flip deftly flip between erudite and absurd. The shop's creative director is a woman, Sharoz Makarechi, who apparently has worked in post-Taliban Afghanistan to "train Afghans in modern communication skills for journalism and social campaign creation." It seems like a very small, tightly knit shop, but someone should check them out. I'd be interested to know more.

Oh yeah, and apparently there are more ads like the one I saw, trying to steal work away from the big guys. They won a One Show Merit. Pretty funny, especially the latter ones.




But on more thought, maybe this ads only work on people like me that see their agency's name, and think, Hey, what the?

Add your ad

Following today's theme of technovations, here's something cool out of Stanford.

ZunaVision

Click over to the ZunaVision website to try it out for yourself.

The ability to put insert new images or video into an existing video is nothing new; advertising's been hot on it for a year or more now, from Dexter to Toyota Matrix to Barack Obama to even the last year's CP+B holiday gift site. But what (apparently) makes this cool is that it democratizes the process by making it easily generated by any user.

I'm not sure this is a great thing as it could eventually lead to even more clutter and ad overload, but it may be an easy way for YouTubers to make some cash. Undoubtedly the technology isn't far off where you'll be able to designate an area in your video as ad space, and it will be served advertisements, just like banners are served now.

Interesting banner ad

We've been discussing the usefulness/effectiveness/intrusiveness of banner ads over the last quarter at school. Here's an interesting one for a brand of Brazilian coffee done by Nazca/Saatchi & Saatchi: http://www.bannerblog.com.au/banners/coffee.swf (Sorry I couldn't post it here. It was jacking my blog up.)

The reason I like this is the simplicity. It's not a TV spot put online or an annoy intrusion on your web-browsing. Rather, it's a very basic game, but it sort of intrigues you to see what's underneath. Also, it ties in nicely with the line. Give 'er a whirl.