An interesting ad concept by the Suzuki creative team. The SUV-asaurus ad doesn't interact with the user, but does with the page elements.

Here's a video if it comes down before you have a chance to check it out:

Thanks @Florido for capturing this spectacle for the world.

It has been a very interesting week on the web. For those of you who aren't aware, my brothers and I started up a little blog about the Pittsburgh Penguins called I Bleed Black 'n Gold. We started it up at the beginning of this NHL season with the primary goals of staying up to date on team news and stories as well as a means to practice building a site and user community.

The network of Penguins and Pittsburgh sports bloggers is interesting as there are quite a few folks, all willing and most helpful of new blogs. Not that we've been around all that long, but we are now able to provide support and guidance to some of the newer guys as was given to us. Anyhow, we knew it would be important to uniquely position ourselves in this already saturated market. With so many blogs covering scores, stats and generic team news and doing a superb job at it, we looked to the media and entertainment sector. So far this has been a successful choice as we often receive requests to edit, share and create Pens related media for users and other bloggers alike. When we do cover scores or game highlights, posts are typically in the tone of entertainment and uncovering unique points.

In our goal to build interesting and interactive media assets, we've recently been toying around with sound clips. Putting Pens related sound bytes to background beats and seeing what we can come up with. As we cut, spliced and edited clips, it became apparent that a soundboard would be fun to try and create. Building the buttons and images in Flash and making it all function was a piece of cake once adjustments of all the clips were complete. So far we've done soundboards for Evgeni Malkin and Maxime Talbot with more on the way.

Apparently, people are enjoying the soundboards quite a bit. We have seen them pop up in a couple places around the web and just had to mention these two instances.

First, as avid listeners of Pittsburgh's Kiss FM Morning Freak Show radio program, we were blown away when we heard that Mikey and Big Bob decided to utilize the Evgeni Malkin soundboard on air. The resulting gag phone call turned out pretty epic and we were super proud that they actually used our board. Give the show a listen:

A few days after we posted the Malkin board, we finished up and set live the Max Talbot version. Max's was a bit more extensive with almost double the clips. As buzz built and people started checking out the Max board, we were shocked. It turns out that Greg Wyshynski editor of the Puck Daddy blog on Yahoo! Sports decided to drop a link to the Talbot board is his post: Puck Headlines: Preds rookie beefcake; Anaheim lucky or good?

Puck Daddy is one of the most entertaining and widely visited blogs by hockey fans, not to mention it is part of the Yahoo! network. Greg and his team of contributors, Ross McKeon, Sean Leahy, Matt Romig, Dmitry Chesnokov, The Two-Line Pass and Margee keep hockey fans entertained yet extremely informed as they are consistently one of the first to publish breaking news. Long story short, Puck Daddy is highly renown in the hockey world.

We were amazed when we started seeing traffic to I Bleed Black 'n Gold spike like crazy. Not that we check it all that often, but the influx of visitors from the PD link ate up all the bandwidth we had for a couple of hours. It was an honor to be mentioned by Greg Wyshynski himself and we are super glad that people are enjoying both of the soundboards and the IBBnG blog in general. Plenty more to come.

Create Twitter groups with Twibes. While native support for groups and group messaging within the Twitter interface is one of the most sought after features for Twitter to add, it has yet to occur. There have been attempts by third party applications to conquer the task of providing users with Twitter group type features, but so far none are quite up to par with what users demand. The closest variation to Twitter groups that I've come across so far is a little service called Twibes.

Twibes is simple and helps bring together users of a particular interest. Users can expand their network and view Twitter search results of that Twibe straight from the group page. However, as with many of the other Twitter Group clients, it lacks vital features. The ability to send a tweet to the entire group is something "coming soon". Although, this is something I have long opposed and will need to be handled delicately to avoid spamming. The advertising is also a bit much and blatantly let's you know why they are trying to make it a destination outside of the Twitter domain.

On the upside, the main page displays a nice assortment of popular and recently created groups as well as many of the topics that Twibes have been established for already.

A user has the ability to create up to 3 Twibes per Twitter account. This is a great limit in my mind, as it will hopefully restrict too many fake or non-utilized groups from being formed and diluting the service.

Twibes presents a unique proposition from a branding and engagement perspective as well. While there a numerous Twitter directories that allow users to classify themselves into categories of tags, do you ever really create a relationship with the tweeps in that directory? I understand maybe that's how you find them and further interactions can ensue, but that's the point. The directory was to locate them, not interact with them. The aspect of search results from the users in a particular Twibe creates an engagement in which you feel the other members are interested and knowledgeable in that Twibe's topic. As with many social tools the utility you gain comes from your own need and how you would like to interact with it. Twibes has pros and cons, but serves it's purpose of bringing people together beyond a basic directory.

If you would like to see an example or are at all interested in ad operations and would like to expand your Twitter network check out the Ad Ops group that I recently created http://www.twibes.com/group/adops

Ohh and YES, "A Twibe Called Quest" does already exist, sorry!

Publishers allowing advertisers to utilize larger dimensions and positions of higher prominence continue to promote creative execution of attention grabbing ads. This is a homepage takeover ad for the 2010 Ford Fusion spotted on the Yahoo homepage.

I'm not sure how long it will run so I grabbed a quick screen capture:

This example of a gargantuan ad spot was well done. With the 2010 Ford Fusion gaining the hype it is at auto shows around the world, it's no wonder Ford was willing to pay big money for this placement.

One point of interest I've been pondering as ads of this format become more and more apparent. Is the majority of the luster the fact that these are new? Beasts we haven't encountered much? When agencies begin repurposing these assets across various web properties, will they have the same intriguing results?

As of late, there have been quite a few quality interaction experiences cited around the World Wide Web. While most of these unique ads simply play with the content of the page its sitting on, there are some that are pushing the boundaries.

With publishers opening more and more to the idea of increased ad rates for ads that do more than run in the assigned frame position, creative agencies are coming up with some very interesting assets.

The iPod touch ads that Apple ran across a number of large publishers were some of the first to take advantage of huge ad dimensions that focus on drawing all the user attention. Roadblocks and takeovers are nothing new, but the interactive component make for much better execution than a generic splash page.

Here are some examples of the Apple ad synced with page elements:

More recently, YouTube has been a destination for many advertisers to give synchronized ads a go. With their recent redesign and implementation of overlay ads, YouTube has positioned themselves to deliver advertisers an arsenal of tools to work with.