You don't have to be a vampire to experience the Civil War; Time travel has been made possible by HISTORY's Civil War Today iPad app. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, HISTORY launched this four-year initiative that walks users through the events of the war in real time as they developed 150 years ago. This iPad app unfolds details of each day with photos, letters, quotes, videos and games that are of great educational and entertainment value. It fits perfectly with the …

It all starts with a simple and sweet idea: Pick from a library of talking lips, voices and messages, hold the phone over your mouth and share the sweet message with your friends and the world. This low-production mobile app leverages mobile, social media and user-generated video to rejuvenate a brand that's old enough to witness the world's first movie studio. The app went viral through its teen audience, reaching tens of millions of people with this incredibly fun and upbeat experience.

There's nothing subtle about Think Jam's takeover promoting the DVD and Blu-ray release of Predators - it's kill or be killed. That's because the ad turns into a shooter game in which a user gets to choose from a selection of high-powered weapons to take down an alien marauding across the home page. It's not every day you get to see green blood splattered on the screen. The creative "gameification" employed is well-suited to the subject and its young-skewing audience.

For a takeover ad aimed at driving tune-in for the third season premiere of FX's hit show, Sons of Anarchy, you might expect a motorcycle gang to come crashing through the page, engines roaring. Instead, Maude relied on strong, simple imagery designed to connect with the series' core male audience. When the ad activates, A "Sons" branded Zippo lighter flicks open and realistic-looking flames consume the page, revealing a photo of the show's characters hitting the open road. 'Nuff said.

Making tax filing an inviting topic is never easy. But Dailey and Initiative, working with Intuit, managed to pull it off in a campaign for TurboTax that ran over Super Bowl weekend on the home pages of AOL, Yahoo and MSN. The ads featured a "TurboTaxi" driving down a folded-down home page onto a GPS map where different routes highlighted key steps of the tax-filing process complete with videos, interactive tools and social tie-ins. Taxes made fun, if that's possible.

Government agencies have been slow to adopt social networks and digital advertising to create awareness, but it appears Mullen changed Department of Defense naysayers into believers through the myfuture.com campaign. Launched by the five military branches to help young adults chart a career path, the campaign brought together information about salaries, colleges and military service opportunities. The videos generated more than 1.7 million views on WebStars' fan pages; more than 19,000 Facebook "likes"; and more than 5,800 commented. Xbox Live Hitviews video downloads generated 72,527 in less …

Combining the real with the virtual world, Moxie designed a campaign to build Verizon into the Alan Wake story line by making the carrier part of the narrative in the game. An in-game Microsoft Tags captured with a physical Verizon mobile device gave thousands of gamers exclusive content, expanding on the story line as it played out on the screen. MTags led gamers to clues, bringing the game through the screen into real life. One tag leading players to Alan Wake's voicemail gave clues about the relationship with his kidnapped wife, …

Campbell Ewald partnered with gsn.com to develop the Chicken of the Sea Undersea Treasure Match game to reach moms. It features the iconic Mermaid, Chicken of the Sea products, and undersea elements such as clamshells and lobsters. The game was skinned with Chicken of the Sea banners with links to recipes. Site visitors played the game 10.4 million times since the March 6, 2011 launch, with 2 minutes and 27 seconds as the average time spent on the game, adding up to 252,148 hours of brand exposure. The game moves to …

Providing a colorful tour of iconic sites in California, SapientNitro designed an online board game for the California Travel & Tourism Commission to educate tourists about the Golden State. The goal was to get travelers to watch their television commercial and create a co-promotion with Southwest Airlines that allowed players to win vacations to California. Players would answer questions about destinations and submit their score for a chance to win a trip. The effort combined online advertising, social media, viral components, events, publicity, and in-plane advertising to get out the message. …

Getting parents to take time from their busy day to interact with ads isn't easy. Meebo created the "Load N' Go" game for Nissan and got parents to spend on average 55 seconds engaging with the ad, compared with an average rate of 17.5 seconds for auto-industry ads. The average engagement rate across was 1.14 percent, a 1.06 percent increase above the industry average of .08 percent for online ads in the sector. The average completion rate for the video was 59 percent, while the number of games completed averaged 49 …