Apple, iPod Touch Shake Up Yahoo Games Homepage

A few months ago, Nintendo and YouTube literally shook up the digital ad world with their Experiece the Wii ad/video. It's awesome. 4,500,000 video views aren't too shabby either. Today, Apple did something similar by running their iPod Touch ad on Yahoo Games front-door. It's the same ad that has been running on television for quite some time... but it behaves much like the Wii video: changing the rest of Yahoo's page as the iPod shifts, tilts, and so forth.

I love these ads - far more entertaining and interactive than traditional banner units. Again - the Wii video was viewed 4.5 million times and was discussed, shared and analyzed on countless blogs / sources.

The real questions are: - how difficult is it to produce these sorts of units and integrate them into the publisher's site? - consequently, how scalable does this become? - and what sorts of CPM lifts do they provide. If Yahoo typically fetches $5 CPMs for that size unit, is this $10? $20? $50?

iPod Touch Yahoo Ad iPod Touch Yahoo Ad iPod Touch Yahoo Ad

More at MacRumors - including the video

Andy Azula, I Actually Like Your Latest Whiteboard Commercial

I've always been surprised by how much traffic my "Andy Azula - The Artist in the UPS ‘Whiteboard’ Commercials" blog post continues to drive. It's quite apparent that Andy Azula and his UPS commercials are quite polarizing. The commercials are now a year old and, for the most part, I find them remarkably annoying.

But like my surprising switch on ESPN.com's new Beta, I suppose I am able and allowed to switch my opinion of Andy Azula... I really like the latest commercial (embedded below). I am not sure how they do it, but the mixture of drawing to animation is seamless and really captures the point that UPS is trying to convey.

By the way - I also love the UPS video player. Very creative and well themed.

Andy Azula - The Artist in the UPS 'Whiteboard' Commercials

I've had too many conversations the UPS 'Whiteboard' commercials. I personally find them relatively creative, but not a single friend of mine agrees. I know this because UPS airs the commercials during every quarter of every NFL game. The next discussion point immediately moves to, "Who is the long haired artist?" Again, I personally think that he is a pretty talented and creative cartoonist (right word?) - but everyone disagrees. And I am always alone in saying that the artist must be famous... after all, how could UPS run a multi-million dollar campaign with an actor or a random guy as the focal point?

It turns out that the answer is somewhere in between, and it's fascinating. It turns out that the actor is Andy Azula and he is the creative director for The Martin Agency. He came up with the 'Whiteboard' concept, got UPS on board and became the face of the campaign. So there you go.

Wikipedia continues: "Andy Azula is a creative director for The Martin Agency, who achieved notoriety after starring in a series of advertisements he created for the United Parcel Service in which he draws on a whiteboard. The ads were directed by Errol Morris. Azula began his career at Leoffler Ketchum Mountjoy. He won awards for his work on North Carolina Travel and Tourism. He later worked at Fallon McElligott in Minnesota where he developed the Buddy Lee campaign for Lee Jeans. He also worked at Goodby Silverstein and Partners and McCann Erickson in San Francisco,[1] creating advertising campaigns for Microsoft. His accounts have also included BMW, Budweiser, E*Trade, and MSN. His work has won him a number of Cliowards, the advertising industry’s highest honor."