• by Nate Elliott , November 15, 2004

I really dislike industry awards; they're too silly and self-congratulatory. And, far too often there's simply nothing worth awarding.

The Eyeblaster Awards proved that point yet again last week. Eyeblaster had already set the bar for dismal industry awards in 2003, when they gave top honors to the most invasive, most annoying online ad I've ever seen.

It would've been impossible for the company to top itself this year, to find an ad that was more crass, or showed less regard for the consumer. So the 2004 Eyeblaster Awards aimed for the other end of the spectrum and honored a blandly inoffensive ad instead. This year's top prize went to a competent, but uninspiring house ad featuring a polar bear burping on the National Geographic home page.

To be fair, we've known since September, when Eyeblaster publicly announced its 10 finalists, that these awards weren't going to be very interesting. Too many of the nominated ads were simply Flash billboards dumped randomly into the middle of the computer screen, and too many more were chosen for the prominence of the advertiser rather than the quality of the creative.

Perhaps Eyeblaster overreacted to the criticism they received for awarding such a dreadful ad last year. Or perhaps advertisers just didn't run very good Eyeblaster creative this year. But Eyeblaster has hosted and served thousands of pieces of rich media in 2004. It's remarkable to think that, out of all those ads, these 10 were the very best.

This unfortunate lack of creativity is by no means limited to Eyeblaster and their awards. A similar melancholy has fallen over most rich media advertising. The creative samples distributed by Unicast are consistently monotonous, and the PointRoll ad gallery rarely inspires either. Other awards shows, such as the iMedia Creative Competition, have also struggled to find decent finalists and winners.

It's getting ugly out there. A general lack of creative excellence, combined with the compulsive need some companies feel to host awards shows, is forcing the industry to throw honors upon unexceptional ads. These awards shows would have you believe that mediocrity is the best that online creative can achieve. I know that the industry can do better, and I hate to think that major advertisers might look at these competitions and wonder if this is all we have to offer.

The site for the Eyeblaster Awards suggests that we "let the creative do the talking." I think these particular pieces of creative have said more than enough. Let's drop the pointless awards shows and put our effort into actually generating quality creative again. Then, maybe our industry will produce something worth awarding.