As it turns out, according to Donald Gunn, the creative director at Leo Burnett advertising agency, there are 12 types of ads.

1. Demo. Example: Apple iPhone commercials
2. Show Need or Problem. Example: Those annoying Cingular ads where the voice drops out making what would have been a normal conversation terribly awkward.
3. Symbol, Analogy, Exaggeration. The product solves a problem. Example: Theraflu ogre ad.
4. Comparison. Example: Charles Schwab posterized ads.
5. Exemplary Story. Example: The VW commercials where the people in the car are just chatting it up and, then out of nowhere, boom! Crash.
6. Benefit Causes Story. Example: the Lynx ad. Probably the funnies ad of the lot, both for men and women – it's so far fetched. It's amazing what one can get away with in the name of comedy. Watch this one if nothing else.
7. Tell it. Example: UPS ad with man who needs a haircut drawing on a whiteboard.
8. On Going Characters and Celebrities. Example: Subway, Mercury, Geico, Energizer Bunny, etc.
9. Symbol, Analogy, Exaggeration. This time, instead of showing how the product solves a problem, the technique demonstrates a benefit of the product. Example: Starbucks, Metamucil, etc.
10. Associated User Imagery. This is all about connecting the product to the type of person the advertiser thinks would be using the product. Hoping for identification. Example: Nike.
11. Unique Personality Property. Example: Dyson Vacuums.
12. Parody of Borrowed Format. I love this format. Basically, make fun of something popular and then stick your logo at the end. Brilliant. Example: Reality TV – Geico.

That was fun, I am sure many of you enjoyed it as much as the next person. I can think of a couple of other types that were missed. Such as the ones that leave you hanging and puzzled with out a concrete message or a call to action. What are those called?

Anyway, what's the overlap between these formats and online advertising?

While we all know that there are many forms of online advertising, such as pay-per-lead, email, search engine keywords, adwords, etc – this next part only includes banner advertising.

Banner Advertising Classification:

1. Irritate the Hell Out of People by Making the Screen Shake. You’ve seen it. Mortgage companies love this tactic. Think right-hand column empire ads in Hotmail.
2. Whack-a-mole. Enough said. The point is to get people to click, right?
3. TV ad on the web. Very popular on sites like Yahoo! and Collegehumor.com. Literally, the ad space looks like a mini made-for-television ad.
4. Background Branding. Where the entire background of the website is leased out to an advertiser. If you want to check this out, go to Pandora.com and keep refreshing the screen until you see it.
5. Traditional. Simple typography, imagery, message, and call to action. An all time classic.
6. "Whoa, did you see that?" rich media. Very amazing, high impact ads that stay contained in their space until the user mousse over them – at which point, the ad "unfolds" on the page overtop the page's content, and a rich media experience is delivered. They are expensive to produce and expensive to run. But effective as hell.
7. Chameleon. The ads that look like content on the site. Trickery!
8. Buttons. These I don’t understand. The space is sold, and people click on them, otherwise they wouldn’t exist, right? Come on!

Ok, that’s all I have time for. I know I am missing some obvious ones, so please help me complete this list.

Labels: advertising, Apple, banner ads, iPhone, Online Advertising, Pandora, search engine optimization

I've been tinkering with Pandora for a while now, over the course of a year at least. For those unfamiliar, it's a smart radio station that takes your initial input, and based on your continued feedback, creates a customized stream of music based on your preferences. While doing this, it also introduces you to new music by similar artists or based on similar traits of the music you've favored. Give the songs a thumbs up or thumbs down and your stream becomes more refined.

It's the result of something called the Music Genome Project which essentially decodes the "musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony."

It's free. From time to time I come back to listen when I am bored with my playlist, or not digging what's on my favorite streams, or when Pandora efficiently reminds me via personalized emails.

Today when I returned I saw something new. The surrounding borders of the main Pandora page were "skinned" by sponsors (Chase, Nike+ and a reality show called Nashville Star). They take over the appearance of the page with the exception of the body, and there is a large format ad as well - a skyscraper or a large box. I don't mind this at all. If intrusive advertising is what keeps a cool thing alive, and free, so be it. Free content surrounded by advertising is not new, but this was the first time I have seen an entire page actually be skinned by a sponsor, let alone done tastefully. If I were there to read content, I would have found it objectionable, but in this case the user experience is to listen, and occasionally react to give the player additional feedback. I thought it was effective.

As I was introducing a co-worker to this, I demonstrated how the player window can be minimized. Once doing that, a large dynamic banner from Amazon appeared over the player featuring products I have either recently purchased or expressed interested in at the Amazon site. This was amazing to me. Perhaps there are few sites I interact with this much on a personal (consumer) level. However, the fact that these two sites are capturing enough data about me to offer up products they know I like, or think I will like, on an ongoing basis is amazing to see happen for real today. The things we talk about and read about the future; highly targeted advertising, highly personalized emails, and dynamic ads generated at such a granular and personal level are happening now.

Oh, did I mention that one of the products Amazon offered me was music that Pandora thought I'd like?

Labels: advertising, Music, Online Advertising, Pandora