Mini UK has launched an online campaign to celebrate the Mini Cooper,
called 'Follow the white rabbit'. Rather than following
the standard banner - clicktrough - landing page scheme, the banners
take you on a randomised tour of independent sites, such as
Roundabouts of Britain, Ugly Footballers, or Street Mattress.

The teasing banners are placed on lifestyle sites, such as Urban Junkies
in the first place. I wonder if all of these inofficial sites were
made up for the campaign, at least it seems that the Agency Profero,
responsible for the work has placed a page on these sites.

A new research by DoubleClick, reported today on MediaPost suggests that rich media usage continues to grow quarter by quarter, while larger ads have surpassed the smaller options in popularity.
The article is pretty good because it's filled with interesting numbers on the diffusion of different online ads formats.
Large formats are getting more and more popular: for example, the leaderboard, a wide unit (728 x 90) that often appears at the top of web pages, is now the fastest growing size at 562% growth from Q2 2002, and is now the fourth most common size served by DoubleClick. Half-page ads (550 x 480) had the second highest response rate at .90%.

Yahoo! Consumer Direct Powered by ACNielsen that's the (long) name of the new service targeting packaged-goods marketers that tries to answer a longstanding question of many advertisers: Do online ads spur offline sales?
Well, this is actually the question asked by AdWeek in an article appearing on Yahoo! News Advertising.

UK online media owners will become the first in the world to be asked by their trade body to cap the number of intrusive ad formats appearing on their sites. The news is reported today on New Media Age.

The New York Times Online has been the first Web site to introduce half-page ads, then several others online publications have followed. After several months of practicing this format, it's interesting to read Zach Rodgers's (looks like he's becoming one of my favourite authors :-) article on Turbo Ads presenting agencies opinions.
Audi is happy with it as McKinney's Interactive Supervisor Erin Bredemann says:

It's summer, it's hot, let's slow down for a while and let's try to analyse how the online advertising industry is doing. This is the suggestion by Zachary Rodgers that on Channel Seven last week wrote The State of the Sector.
He talks a little bit of ads quality and industry expectations, he refers to @d:Tech and he brings up a bunch of useful opinions but consultants and analysts. Definitely worth reading.

We are getting plenty of evidence that helps us prove that online advertising works. So why then are 99% of online ads complete rubbish? This is the question asked (and answered) by Tom Bazeley of Tribal DDB yesterday on New Media Age.
A creative revolution in online advertising is long overdue. To find out how and why, read on the article...

Richard Linnett reported yesterday on AdAge that ESPN is reporting some success in selling its broadband streaming video feature ESPN Motion. Lexus, Gatorade, Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers have already decided to buy an ad space on the product.

A new tool to block rich media ads will be soon offered to its subscribers by Earthlink. As described in an article of Yahoo! News, the access provider will help web surfers stopping pop-up and pop-unders. Last August EarthLink launched a pop-up blocker that has been downloaded by 1.2 million customers.
On the matter the are different opinions: EarthLink believes that "Pop-up ads started off as a legitimate vehicle for people to monetize their sites but what we saw ended up being used irresponsibly and generated a strong backlash from consumers and tools to control them". While Jupiter Research associate analyst Nate Elliott was uncertain how many people would actually choose to use the tool: "Most people see Flash content as beneficial because it gives them interesting animation.".

A new research, released today by Advertising.com provides interesting highlights on online consumer behavior and interactive marketing. The study shows online ad performance by frequency of impression, creative size and format, daypart and industry category, as measured across Advertising.com�s network of over 1,900 websites.
To learn more about the research, I suggest reading Marsha Geller today's article on Mediapost.

I've found a somehow funny but interesting article by Jack Russell on The Inquirer. As journalist of a commercial Web site, he explains his opinion about online advertising and after he presents his position, as user, towards new ads formats like Unicast's ones. I appreciated the way he presented his opinions: he's been very smart and sincere.

Thanks to real broadband opportunities, online advertising has started offering valuable results to marketers. This is the message by Penelope Patsuris in her today's article on Forbes.com in the section brightly named "The Half-Full Economy" (!? :-).
Recent research results produced by IAB on case studies like Colgate's and McDonald's, have shown that online advertising could prove as an efficient marketing tools in a multi-channel strategies. Further point to support the bright future of online advertising investments are scored by paid search advertisements.
Eventually, in a survey by GartnerG2, ad agencies said they plan to bump up clients' online spending from 5.5% of their budgets to 6.8% by year's end, and up to 9% by the close of 2004.

The IAB has released a detailed breakdown of its 2002 online ad spend figures which, it says, proves online has finally ended its reliance on its traditional sectors, including hi-tech and media. Read the news as reported byNew Media Zero.

Nike named Advertiser of the Year

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives