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Interactive / Web
Developed by Mplayer Entertainment for Universal Pictures
| | 'The Grinch' gets creative with banner ad
Interactive Media and Marketing
By Matt Carmichael
The Grinch may be stealing Christmas, but he's giving back to Universal Studios - and not just back at the box office. The grinch promotion running on the Mplayer Entertainment Network is turning in high click-through rates of up to 26%, according to press releases. How is Universal doing it? Simple: It found a way to use the banner space (and some other areas of the page) creatively.
Mplayer visitors are engaged with the Grinch ducking and hiding in various parts of the page as he eventually steals the Christmas decorations from the banner space.
It's not the first ad to play with the content on a page. As far back as 1992, USA Today and American Honda Motor Co. teamed up for the launch of the RAV4, with the SUV driving through the navigation bar on the USA Today site.
The advantage of this campaign is that it breaks out of the banner space (and in this case, adds a touch of playfulness to the marketing message). The drawback is that ads like this tend to be more work for the marketer and content site to run, and can't be served as simply.
The end result, as this ad shows, can still be a very good one for both marketer and site. We have always liked campaigns that use the banner space in thoughtful ways, and combining that with some other units in this case can be a nice holiday treat for everyone.
This kind of ad won't work all the time, or on every site. But if you've got a playful site like a gaming network and a playful product like a movie based on a Dr. Seuss story, you can get away with coloring outside the lines a bit.
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