I agree wholly that the interactive nature of the Web and the creative possibilities therein are severely underused when it comes to internet advertising.
Users shouldn't be tricked into
click-through, they should want to. In essence, every advertisement should provide a service. Just like TV commercials will often entertain in a medium that's designed for entertainment, Internet
advertisements should provide a service relevant to the site on which they advertise. I'm not just talking about content-driven advertising, I'm talking about substantive advertising.
One of
my favorite examples was a campaign that Burger King did for "The Simpsons" movie a year back. They advertised on MySpace and Facebook that users could upload pictures of themselves to their
application, and it would generate a Simpsons-style picture of the user for them to put up on their profile page.
This kind of advertisement creates an experience that seamlessly fits into the
user's online experience, and it's the type of creativity needed to drive online advertising through the doldrums of pre-rolls and banner ads.
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