In the online space a strong creative idea can be greatly impacted by poor consideration of the website, technographics, and the online behaviour of the visitor.
My example is this banner ad for Toyota (also seen above) as created by Saatchi & Saatchi Toronto.
As you will see it does have some element of cool and yes it will cause the pattern interruption that most online advertisers are looking for but in my mind it fails because the ad does not work within the site, nor does it consider the user behaviour or their needs.
This is a 100% brand centric experience (if you can call it that) and not a consumer centric experience.
So lets breakdown the mistakes.
1. Consider screen resolutions and the visible area: I have viewed the exact page on Canada.com on my 13" MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro using Safari & Firefox (first screen shot). The viewable area of this page cuts off the screen directly underneath the bigbox. Great! you think. Not at all. The value of the page is hidden and with the animation of this banner heading in the reverse direction that users move within a website they are ensuring that fewer people have an opportunity to see the ad.
2. Consider the user: Why would anyone go to Canada.com? They are their to view news, information and learn. They have arrived with curiosity or a specific need, problem or goal. This is not a site where users will spend much time on level 2 landing page. They are trying to get the level 3 where the find the actual stories. All of this information is quite a ways down the page. With a scroll of 90 pixels our user will loose any opportunity to view the actual ad. It takes about 10 seconds to get the digging man into the leaderboard. Trust me the user has long ago left the page or scrolled down to see the content.
3. Consider the functionality of the page: I never have and never will allow any piece of online advertising I touch to interfere with the navigation. This ad I imagine would render the navigation useless as it moves through that section of the site - not something that in my opinion positively impact the users experience or perception of the brand.
So basically we have a "cool idea" that through it's execution has ensured that as few people as possible actually have a chance to see it, is created in a way that negatively impacts user experience and renders the navigation useless. In the end I give it a 7 for the idea. 3 for the execution
