• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 4, 2009

Creative shops working to distribute global campaigns without knowing plans for full media buys can push the envelope to deliver innovative content to clients like Warner Bros. to connect consumers with movies.

Despite the need to tweak creative pieces at the last minute in 60 markets, and not knowing the countries, size or specs where and when the ads will run, global campaigns similar to "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" provide an example of how agencies and brands can tap technology to make it work.

Warner Bros. pushed Avatarlabs through creative boundaries. "By demanding that, we got creative with the ad," Laura Safechuck, a creative director at Avatarlabs, Los Angeles, told Online Media Daily on Monday. "We're finding clever ways to create ads, despite bandwidth constraints and limitations of the host site. And when the client's on board, it works better to push the limits of technology."

Technology only becomes an inhibitor if the creative team and client allow it. While a typical display ad may require cutting the ad into several files containing download instructions, video and gallery panels, the Harry Potter piece required several dozen files to create one rich media ad. In fact, the ad had 60 files, all less than 60k. Just the background video consisted of six pieces, each about 2.2 megabytes.

"It's important to interpret specs, so territories will let the large innovative ads run without feeling it breaks possible limitations of their platform," Safechuck says,

The ads ran on MSN, MySpace and YouTube, among other properties from July 1 through the end of the month. The studio managed between 11 and 30 regions. Each territory monitored their respective schedule. "It's possible the ads are still running internationally, but we're not sure where they are," Safechuck says, adding that Avatarlabs has moved on to work on projects such as James Cameron's "Avatar," as well as "Whiteout," "Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs," "Zombieland" and District 9."

Along with the ad for Zombieland, Safechuck says Avatarlabs will release an iPhone app that scans for zombie bites. "You scroll the iPhone along your arm or leg to expose a zombie bite," she says. "It's looking for decaying skin. We're done about six iPhone apps for titles. One released last year is still going strong."

Avatarlabs relies on Eyeblaster's global advertising management. All parties working on the same campaign have access. Reports are spit out with combined data, according to Dean Donaldson, director of digital experience at Eyeblaster. One template is built that can update the creative pieces with different languages and images depending on where the ad runs in the world.

Donaldson says Eyeblaster is working on building out the platform to allow companies to distribute across multiple channels, such as online and mobile.