I said it. I will say it again, I love search advertising. Okay, well I love it when it is unique or when agencies and brands figure out a way to stand out in search. I don’t know what the relevance of banners but I know I rarely pay attention to them. Obviously when a brand does something that stands out or catches your attention it works. Two of my favorite examples Volkswagen and Converse (see the examples below) not only stand out but do so in way that is very true to each brand’s voice.
VW:
The SEA Team, a group of graduates of the Willem de Kooning Academy in Amsterdam, recently developed the concept of SEA (Search Engine Advertising), taking Google’s Search Engine Optimization to a whole new level. They came up with a way to place a complete ad for Volkswagen in the image search results. The VW Passant Variant is presented as the ultimate business car using images from separate urls, ultimatebusinesscar.com, ultimatebusinesscar.nl. ultimatebusinesscar.biz, ultimatebusinesscar.info, and ultimatebusinesscar.net.
Converse:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHtyQJzTy70[/youtube]