While I’m not a big fan of flashing banners and over the page creative, the IAB UK site has some cool examples of what can be done with rich media campaigns.
I particularly like the cute Elf in the Discover card campaign as he waits for you to interact with him rather than starting up without you wanting him to. The campaign was successfully spread through viral marketing and won several awards.
The Golf GTI campaign may be ‘creative’ but the Crispin Porter execution shows just how frustrating slow downloads can be and probably prevented loads of people from getting the message in the ad.
A quick search didn’t produce any recent data on the animation vs static debate but I did find some studies from 2005:
An Eyetrack III study showed some interesting online advertising observations –
“Comparing static and animated ads instead revealed a mixed trend of some static outperforming animated ads and vice versa. Perhaps this relates back to prevailing user ‘banner blindness’ avoiding ads which are just that; ‘ads’.”
I also like observation 10 – “Small pop-ups are quickly viewed, then closed or hidden.”
This iMedia Connection case study discusses a static vs animated test with interesting results.
I also found that as far back as 2002 both Microsoft and Time Warner agreed to eliminate the majority of pop-up ads on their sites due to complaints from users.
I’m sure there are probably many articles that show animation outperforming static ads however, the above examples may be useful when convincing your creative team that large n flashy banners aren’t always best!
This all points back to ad relevance – I think integration and good placement are still the key to a great campaign.
[...] versus flash Published May 5th, 2007 Internet Business , media Liv touches one the eternal static versus flash ad debate. I like the idea of the elf but he seems to [...]