Chado-Design.com

In previous posts I have praised innovative campaigns that have taken traditional mediums and fused them with new technology to do create something new and unique. This new billboard created by DDB Stockholm is a great example of how this can be taken a step further and promote interaction with the audience. The billboard features a simple yet clever interactive game for McDonalds. The billboard shows menu items that move about the screen and if viewers are fast enough to capture one of the food items with their cell phone camera they can go to the nearby McDonalds to pick up the item for free. This billboard does an excellent job capturing the audience’s attention and actually engages the potential customer. As more billboards are equipped with the capability to display video it will be interesting to see how brands take advantage of the improved technology to communicate with their target markets.

Yesterday, along with the iPhone OS 4.0, Steve Jobs introduced iAd, Apple’s own mobile advertising platform that according to Apple, “combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads”. This new platform, that will directly compete with Google’s new mobile ad platform, enables users to view fun, interactive in-app advertisements that unlike current ads do not require the user to go into a separate browser to view content. The average iPhone user spends an estimated 30 minutes inside apps everyday so if an ad is displayed every three minutes there would be over one billion ad impressions everyday on all of Apple’s 100 million devices in use. The new ads will be different than traditional mobile ads. They will feature interactive and video content within the ad enabling instant video playback, sound clips, and even games. For example, a Nike ad lets users watch videos, design their own custom shoe, or find a store all within the app. Apple plans to sell and host the ads while giving developers 60% of the revenue. Since Apple devices do not support Flash media all interactive ads will be done through HTML5. The ads will also be targeted towards specific users based on the content in their app.

I think iAd is a great idea for Apple to release now for a number of reasons. First it keeps the actual prices of the apps down while allowing app developers to get paid. As the developers get paid more for their apps they are more likely to develop better apps or provide better support for current apps. Also it gives magazines and other publications a good reason to move to the iPad. They make their money and run their business from advertising sales and these specialty apps give them an incentive to transition to their product. Lastly, this new platform will be very profitable for Apple. It will be very interesting to see how the new ads evolve, how they are received by users, and what impact they have on the industry.

“And Then There Was Salsa” is the new viral video from Frito Lay hosted on Vimeo. The video starts out as a normal web video then slowly expands out of the video frame and takes over the entire window giving the video a 3D look. Although similar viral videos with 3D elements have been done before, they haven’t looked this good. This new viral video is already creating buzz and is a good example of where the future of online advertisements and viral videos can go.