Socialmediaworx

It’s no secret that banner advertising is in a world of hurt right now. The curent trends in ad placement have led to banner blindness, and the click through rates continue to plummet along with the sinking economy.

While I think we’re going to see more growth in the use of widgets and applications (despite some recent reports), I agree with Noah that we also need to consider more creative ad design and development.

Two recent ads by Nintendo and Apple take a similar approach to manipulating the web real estate around the ad:

Nintendo Wii

Apple iPhone

Yes, this approach is expensive, but Apple has had excellent success with this approach before. But these ads are getting the attention their old-school banner ad brothers are not, and perhaps there is even room to build on this style of advertising with a social approach.

[Update]

With the launch of the new ESPN.com, Ford created an excellent page takeover spot that seemlessly integrated the anchor video and banner ad. The dedicated ad page is here: http://a.espncdn.com/prestitial.html