• by Masha Geller , February 5, 2002

As if we needed another ad format to deal with, a German ad serving company ADTECH (not to be confused with @d:Tech the tradeshow) today introduced what they call a "Scratchy Banner."

A banner that looks like a lottery scratch-off ticket may not be particularly inspiring at first, but it did get me to check out the company's website, which actually highlights some other banner formats I found interesting.

As I said, the first one was the Scratchy Banner - it consists of two GIFs, which together produce a full size format. One motif is visible, and can encourage the user to interact with slogans like "Scratch me!" The second motif is initially covered by a gray surface, which the user scratches off with the mouse.

The second format I thought was interesting (and somewhat reminiscent of things I've seen done by some U.S. companies) is the MouseMove banner. When the user calls up a website, a tiny ad banner appears directly beside the cursor. The banner follows the cursor around but disappears when the cursor is at rest. This one became really frustrating as I chased it around the screen to try to click on it, but I can see the potential with the right creative.

Another format I really liked was the Sticky banner (a.k.a. Freeze Screen Position Banner). ADTECH says the ad was created because when a user scrolls down a web page, the ad in the premium position at the top of the page normally disappears. The Sticky banner always remains in the user's view, in exactly the same position on the screen, as the content scrolls around it. Definitely worth a look, especially when you consider that the average duration of a page view amongst U.S. surfers is 55 seconds - every second can really count with this format.

There are more formats to play with on the company's site, and yes, it's technically possible to serve all of them onto American websites because ADTECH has acquired world-wide licenses of the AdForce ad serving solution and has integrated it into its own system.