• by Jim Meskauskas , February 6, 2002

It’s been a big week in advertising as the days in the wake of the Super Bowl have been filled with talk about how the ads just weren’t quite as good as they’ve been in the past, that mLife’s campaign was confusing but seemed to drive a ton of traffic to their website, and that the death of Mariah Carey’s career may have been much exaggerated.

But the best thing to have come out of this year’s Super Bowl of Advertising was, for the first time as a significant part of strategy, mass advertisers with mass brand recognition used mass media in conjunction with the Web to create a comprehensive communications package and finally realize the meaning of “surround sound marketing.”

Nowhere was that more in evidence than on the home page of Yahoo! the day after the Super Bowl.

If you had a chance to visit Yahoo! any time that day, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Upon landing on the home page, a large ad unit sort of “phases in” and comes to the front of the page, while the Yahoo! site itself sort of sits back and lets the advertisement take over. The ad had the same look, feel, and more-or-less the content of the television spot that ran during the Super Bowl. It was consistent with the rest of the campaign Pepsi launched on Sunday and there is no doubt that the online ad was just as noticeable as the broadcast spot.

In essence the unit was a kind of “take over” of the Yahoo! home page, similar in tactic to efforts done on behalf of Pizza Hut and Ford. Though I personally think the unit employed was more interesting (and Britney Spears is cuter than an animated pizza with pepperoni), it was essentially meant to do the same thing, with the additional “Now and Then Sweepstakes” call to action.

Some folks in the biz, however, have been grousing about this ad and others like it. Not because it is bad or lacks innovation. It is because the ad is seen as being “intrusive.” Yes, intrusive.

Now, we’ve all heard this before. The very first daughter-window ads were feared for their being too intrusive. Interstitials and now Superstitials - same thing. Intrusive. Want to run audio in your online ad? Intrusive. Animated GIF 89’s? Intrusive.

You know what I say to that?

So what! Isn’t that what advertising is supposed to be? Intrusive?

When I’m watching “Rose Red” on ABC and there is a pod of commercials every 5 minutes, I think that’s intrusive.

Before I can catch who the artist was performing a particular song on the radio, I’ve got a spot for Foxborough. That’s intrusive.

An interesting thing to keep in mind when weighing the pros and cons of advertising units like this: everything is intrusive until it isn't. We'll get used to it.

It isn’t like being called on the phone during dinner. It isn’t like someone walking in on me while I’m in the bathroom to sell me toilette paper – though that might be an interesting idea. It is instead part of the relationship we have with our media. We’ve come to accept that advertising is in all other media. Online is no different.

Now, pop-ups are a different story. Those are interruptive in the way they arrest one's attention. They annoy without finesse. They poke through without inspiration. They are the worst the web has to offer.

But the Pepsi campaign on Yahoo, or the Pizza Hut thing, or what AT&T was doing with the snowplow, or the little robot on the AdWeek site; all these units "seep in" and become the foreground of the property being engaged. Distinct, but not apart. They represent the early stages of evolution towards more of a "flow" experience on the web, rather than the static experience most of us have with content and its subsidy.

My only hope is that publishers do not back away from implementing these kinds of innovations for fear of alienating an audience because a highly rarefied group of advertising nerds find them intrusive.

Without a blend of advertisers AND audience, you ain't got much of a business.