This week I was rummaging through a bunch of online ads and decided to choose two ads that showcase the best of what creative team can bring to the table. The first spot takes a simple banner ad and adds some induced interaction. The spot is for Stride Gum, and to play off of the company’s claim for being the “ridiculously long lasting” gum, the banner ad challenges a user to click and follow the banner ad for as long as possible. What I enjoy about the spot, is that it takes the simplicity of a banner ad, blends in a key brand signifier, and adds an addictive and engaging gaming aspect as well.

The ad resulted in, a click-through rate that is currently at .9% (the industry standard is .07%). The winner received 500 dollars and followed the ad for an amazing and somewhat saddening 46 minutes and 27 seconds.

The next spot is something I hope comes to the streets of Los Angeles. There have been so many times when I have been in a rush to get somewhere and have to roam the city for hours looking for a place to park thanks to a bunch of chumps who decided that only two cars could parallel park on an entire city block. The campaign comes from the Russian online city newspaper called The Village (www.the-village.ru). Some folks at the paper were tired of the horrible parking they witnessed around the city and thought that they should help do something about it. So they created an application called “Parking Douche,” which allows users to photograph poorly parked vehicles and their license plates and then upload those photos into the application.

The data is then streamed to banner ads targeted to hit IP addresses within a moderate distance of where these egregious parkers are situated. The banners appear as pop-ups on web-sites, interrupting one while he or she is trying to read an online article. When you roll your cursor over the banner it lets you know that a particular car is annoying people on a certain street in your area. To remove the banner one simply has to share the “Parking Douche” on Facebook.

While the ads are of course intrusive and somewhat annoying, so are those people that choose to park like clowns. So hopefully this app becomes available worldwide and people will think twice about parking so poorly.