David Pitlyuk

Yesterday I went to go take a look at the original content section of College Humor videos, as they produce some pretty good high quality stuff like the popular internet comments in a boardroom series. When I went to the video, I noticed that the page had done an ad takeover for AirTranU.com, which is a flight standby program specifically for people between the ages of 18-22 aka college kids.

By doing an ad takeover, there were quite a few elements that took place (That I noticed):

• The background was changed to match the AirTran U branding (blue)
• The AirTran U logo was placed next to the College Humor logo
• The AirTran U logo is provided along the right and left rails of the page
• The video is surrounded by the actual “ad”, promoting a contest to offer free flights until you’re 23 from AirTran U.
• Prior to the video playing (pre-roll), there was a quick few second branding spot with the AirTran U logo stating that the video was brought to you by them.
• After the video was finished (post-roll), it automatically went to a 15 second commercial for AirTran U.
• Everything, including the background, was clickable.
• The only thing that didn’t seem to work was the 300×250 ad spot just said “Loading Advertisement”. I’m assuming either the 300×250 ad from AirTran U was not working, or they didn’t have one, so did not load an ad for competitive separation/exclusivity reasons.

Here’s a screenshot of the page, feel free to click it to see the full version:

I have to say that this ad takeover was really done right.  It was very effective to me as a consumer from a performance, targeting, and branding perspective.  On top of that, it also looks good.  I definitely noticed the ad/brand (enough for me to write this article!), and ended up clicking through just to see what it was all about.  I wonder what the cost of a takeover like this is, and what the CPM works out to be.  Anybody in the industry care to chime in?  It would be interesting to see more of this in the blogosphere, as long as it’s done right.

What are your thoughts?  Is it too much?