Lock, Stack and Bytes

I simply love The Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman. And to think that its just an ad! Now that is what I call a good, super creative, win-some-new-customers type of advertisement. Besides the fact that the message itself is very subtle, the cool thing about this ad is that I choose to see it. Nobody forced me to see it. Over the last year or so, we are increasingly seeing this trend - use of “advertisement websites” by big corporations. I think it was Honda and BMW that started it by launching websites that had some nifty ad-cum-movie content.

That brings me to the reason why I made this post. Well…not really. I started off this post just with the idea of spreading the word about Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman - more specifically, the “second part” which they released today. But then, it got me thinking about this whole business of advertising - on the web. Especially, these otherwise good sites that are proliferated with cheezy, blinking, pinkish-reddish ads. Of course, “real-estate” has always been a big constraint for websites as far as putting advertising content is concerned. So first they came up with those infamous pop-ups. Then the more notorious child-pop-ups of parent pop-ups. And then the still more notorious grand children… Well, you get the idea. And I would beg to disagree with folks who say that this was the case only with pornographic sites, gambling sites, and all the human-vice related sites. Of course, these days we have got it fairly under control with pop-up blockers, spyware killers and what not. Ah! So, now the advertisers have resorted to all the flash-dance (remember the 80’s chick flick) with a “X” or “close” button hidden somewhere in the Flash ad movie. Well, I guess it is just one of those things that they refer to as “necessary evil” and I, and many more like me, will have to live with it. Or is there a better way of advertising on websites? Well, do we see a potential killer app…maybe.

- Rajesh