During the Cannes Lions Festival earlier this year I got a glimpse of some of the work our advertising team was working on with clients to bring new ad formats to life in Windows 8. Last Monday, some of that work broke cover at Advertising Week in New York. Stephen Kim covered the work in detail in a blog post on the Microsoft Advertising blog so I’ll give a quick visual recap here.
To set the stage – Windows 8 provides a totally new canvas for brands to think about advertising and what interests me most is how integrated ads can appear to be. They have a magazine like appearance but obviously benefit from being digital, which affords another level of creativity. Big Spaceship, Razorfish, Team Detroit, Universal McCann and Y&R Group have all been working with our creative teams to take advantage of these capabilities.
Big Spaceship’s concept for Finish Line shows how advertising can be seamlessly integrated – in this case in to the sports section of the LA Times app. When a customer clicks the ad, a panoramic format ad shows up with strategically placed “hot spots” on the runner that allows people to touch to learn more.
Delta Airlines in the NBC News App – Agency Partner: Razorfish
Razorfish conceptualized a Windows 8 Ads in Apps concept for Delta in the NBC News app that played on Delta’s “Up” campaign. Within the NBC News app, a user taps the Delta tile which then extends the screen up for a fully immersive Delta experience.
You can see the apps being demo’ed at Advertising Week in a series of videos and Stephen covers a number of other concepts in his blog post that give you a real sense of how advertising can be more immersive in Windows 8 while at the same time being less intrusive and contextually relevant.
Personally, that’s how I think advertising should be so I’m optimistic about what we’ll see from Windows 8 ads in apps.
