Effective Advertising
Advertising has become so omnipresent on the web that 99% of it just gets ignored (did you notice the ads to the right of this post?). I could probably do an even longer rant about how I’d change Google Ads if I had the keys to the castle, but instead I’d like to mention an ad campaign that’s doing everything right.
It’s no secret the the movie business spends millions of dollars on advertising–and most of it is just as bad as the rest. I see a pretty good share of annoying ones, as my browser home page has been IMDB for as long as I can remember. A lot of times the ad campaigns are too heavy handed, and you actually have to spend a few brain cycles to figure out how to get them to go away (which I’d consider the cardinal sin of advertising, although I know some consider a negative reaction to be better than no reaction at all).
When I loaded up Firefox just now, though, this is what I saw at the top of the page (and below the normal top banner ad):
After a couple of seconds, each individual symbol faded out to reveal the normal logo:
At first, I assumed it was an ad for the Golden Compass–which got pretty bad reviews and didn’t do so hot at the box office. I was actually intrigued enough by the ad to click on it and see what it was. It was actually ad for the new National Treasure movie, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight. It’s possible that my positive reaction has something to do with the fact that I’m really looking forward to the film (the first is one of my favorites from the last few years), but I’m going to stick to my guns and say that it’s because this is one of the most effective ads I’ve seen in recent memory.
