Warner Bros. one of those using Banners 2.0

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story up today on how online marketers are trying to get people to once again pay attention to banner ads. As one of the earliest – and most annoying – forms of online advertisements, banners are now sort of being looked right bast by web surfers. Text is the new hot online ad format but brand advertisers still prefer banners because they’re graphical, meaning logos and copy points can be arranged and included just like in a newspaper or magazine ad.

The trend of viewers ignoring ads is leading technology companies and advertisers to get creative about how those banners are created and what they look like. No longer are they static strips that clutter up a page design they’re becoming more interactive in nature and can include more elements. And some movie studios are using that to promote their movies online:

Movie studios are taking advantage of this. To promote the return of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in “TMNT,” Warner Bros. worked with Internet-ad broker DoubleClick, which Google recently agreed to acquire for $3.1 billion, to create an ad that included a video trailer, a brief description of the film, pictures, wallpaper and instant-message icons to download.

This goes hand in hand with the story I posted a couple weeks ago on Media Banners and how they were able to essentially replicate the content of an official website within an expanded banner ad. Rich media advertising is becoming more and more sophisticated both in its delivery and in its targeting.