I've visited three blogs today that have featured advertising from Lenovo's (formerly IBM's) Thinkpad. The ad spot is a titanium vs. black Thinkpad voting parody and it works very well. It's probably the first animated blog ad that's stood out to me in many months (maybe years). I think the effectiveness comes from a few angles:
- Superb Animation - very clean lines, fluid motion, and well timed
- Play on an Election - the content featuring parodies of politics is smartly done and not overly tacky
- Great Landing Page - delivers the content you expect and isn't overly pushy about the product
- Personal Bias - Since Nick W mentioned at Threadwatch that he bought a Thinkpad and Jim Boykin recently did likewise, the product was already fresh in my mind (that can't hurt)
For those of us in SEO, these type of ads are rarely used - they don't provide link value. But as SEO becomes more all-encompassing of Internet marketing and advertising in general, this will be an area we'll have to expand into. I haven't designed a Flash animation ad for at least 3 years, but I'm guessing it's something I'll be doing at least once this year.
The other SEO predjudice against Flash is that it increases the page size too much (probably somewhat archaic)... I think a lot of marketers are ready to embrace rich media if it will lead to higher conversions - and I am confident it will. However, flash designers need to meet us halfway on this, by concentrating on better info design and using Flash to increase usability, not reduce it.