• by Masha Geller , May 4, 2001

Have you seen the new Ford Explorer ad on Yahoo!? Not to sound like a giddy schoolgirl, but you have to check it out. This ad is by far one of the best executions I've seen on the web to date. It's only up for one day, so do it soon.

This afternoon, as I was trying to think of a gentle way to tell you that at least 55 Internet companies folded in April, making it the second deadliest month since February, our VP of Sales & Marketing Nick Friese ran into my office and asked if I'd seen the cool Ford ad on Yahoo.

As you know, advertisers almost never use "Yahoo!" and "cool" in the same sentence, since the portal has been so slow in accepting new formats and trying new things, so I was reasonably intrigued. My typical skepticism intact, I watched the page load, seeing nothing special. Only a half banner at the top of the screen, with the familiar Ford oval and a bunch of little black birds on a wire.

Then three of the birds flew down to the middle of the page and started pecking at what looked like bird food in the Marketplace section, uncovering another image of the Explorer. The link: "Click to uncover the next territory."

Fine, I clicked, expecting a pop-up. Instead, the page shook, the birds scattered and a big red Ford Explorer drove up to the front of my screen, replacing most of the content. The only word this cynic could think of was, and I quote, "cool!"

As I played the ad again, Nick said that this is exactly the kind of stuff we need to move the online advertising industry forward. I wholeheartedly agree. Everyone TALKS a great deal about creativity, content integration, and interactivity in online advertising, but no one has really DONE anything. Until this. Sure, Ford must have paid a fortune to convince Yahoo to try something like this, but I think it was worth it. If only to inspire the rest of us to try.