Joe Laszlo’s Take:
This is a great example of an ad leveraging geographic and meteorological relevance to increase the likelihood of consumers interacting with it.  Especially if they happen to be someplace with bad weather.  I like the use of the touch-screen as well.  Like a lottery scratch-off game, it encourages the consumer to wipe away the snow, rain, fog, or whatever where they happen to be to see the prize of where they might go on vacation instead.

Brief Description of Execution:
After the first year of being in the iPad The Weather Channel with over 6mm downloads was able to garner usage insights based on inventory and consumer feedback.  With that real time intel we were able to completely redesign the App to truly take advantage of all the iPad has to offer... sight, sound and motion!

As we introduced this new experiential application to the marketplace we made it possible for advertisers to have ownership for the first two weeks of our launch.  Westin owned the Current Conditions screen as well as the local screen to welcome consumers as well as showcase their offerings.

What made this execution interesting or special?
Thanks to the innovation of the application, Westin was able to run a truly rich campaign by pulling in relevant data from the application into their ad units so that every impression was fresh and on point to the consumer mindset.  From there a consumer could tap the ad unit to engage in the Westin creative, which had the user wipe away the weather to uncover the exciting destinations in Westin’s portfolio.

Joe Laszlo’s Take:
I like this ad because it shows that you don’t have to be over the top to deliver a strong tablet-oriented ad; indeed, you can do it for a B2B telecom service. The ad fits great in its context (it’s a puzzle in an issue of Wired devoted to puzzles), and it’s simple yet it manages to surprise, and extend the metaphor that “objects”—and even words—on a tablet screen have some reality to them.

Brief Description of Execution:
This Qwest ad that ran in Wired Magazine’s May digital edition was designed to challenge WIRED’s brainiacs with brain teasers. WIRED’s audience is comprised of problem solvers. Incidentally, solving problems (of the business + VOIP network nature) is also what QWEST does best. The team at The Studio at Condé Nast enhanced the puzzle idea to leverage the tablet’s unique functionality: the accelerometer. Upon swiping to the ad, a discrete but instructional headline cued readers to shake the iPad. This movement sparked a gradual collapse of the type on the ad itself—words bumping into other words, letters breaking apart. The font rubble on the bottom of the screen would shift and fall as the reader rotated the device. Until at last, only 5 letters remained (TRENE) next to a form field prompting the reader to unscramble the letters. Puzzle champs typed ENTER into the field and hit SUBMIT to head to the Qwest page where their problem-solving services were outlined in detail.

What made this execution interesting or special?
The Studio at Condé Nast’s first-ever shake-activated ad employed real-life physics that allowed users to roll letters around a page, enabling native app capabilities with HTML5.

Joe Laszlo’s Take:
This is a cool example of an ad that takes advantage of the portrait/landscape differential of tablets to activate it, then has a natural and intuitive metaphor for unlocking deeper dives into the content of the ad. It presents a lot of information in an elegant, viewer-friendly way, something all informational ads should aspire to.

Brief Description of Execution:
The IBM Smarter Cities campaign ran in The Wall Street Journal iPad application as a full screen interstitial. To activate the ad, readers were encourage to tilt their iPad to begin the animation using the accelerometer. From there, they could “fly” through the city using swipe motions and tap on a neighborhood to learn more. Each neighborhood featured animation and video to engage the user. Readers could complete a data form to request more information.

What made this execution interesting or special?
TheSmarterCity.com is an interactive experience that takes users through six richly animated chapters, introducing the audience to a global city with urban challenges. TheSmarterCity.com showcases how governments can transform a city’s systems and provide answers to big problems through the use of case studies, solutions and services from IBM that are already being applied to drive innovations across major cities around the world. TheSmarterCity enables users to acknowledge current problems and understand through both visual and aural cues what solutions and resources are available in a “non-sales pitch” approach.

Joe Laszlo’s Take:
This is a nice example of how ads can be deeply integrated into the look and feel of the content in an app. While always clearly an ad, the full-screen creative replicates the UI of the AP app nicely, enabling the viewer to go as deeply into the car and its features as they want to.

Brief Description of Execution:
The AP conceived, designed and executed an exclusive 3-month sponsorship of the AP News iPad application for Lincoln’s MKX vehicle. The app’s unique design enabled the AP to showcase the MKZ vehicle to perfectly targeted users  through compelling text, photos and videos that concierged users to an elegant and ultra-engaging landing page. Each ad unit was non-standard in size (which required new artwork from the creative team) and resulted in a campaign looked original, current and unprecedented.

Whether the user was reading articles, viewing full-screen HD photos or watching video, Linclon’s imaging was completely foreground providing maximum exposure and branding. When users tapped the Lincoln logo, they were delivered to the landing page where they could explore, engage and experience Lincoln’s assets.

What made this execution interesting or special?
The branding was delivered in an exceptional manner. Lincoln’s imaging was unique, everpresent and fit flawlessly in the app. The landing page was an alluring way to let users explore and engage with their collection of photos, videos and text.

Joe Laszlo’s Take:
This ad is a tough act to follow. Deliberately pulling out all the stops, it makes use of practically every tablet feature and functionality, with a fun theme to tie it all together and lots of cheeky surprises along the way. I’m not sure I’d buy an iPad just to see this ad, but I have definitely shown it off to a bunch of people.

Brief Description of Execution:
A tap is not a click. A tablet is not a computer. Pepsi MAX is not a typical soft drink. With all of these insights combined, Pepsi MAX and its agency TBWA\Chiat\Day worked with Medialets and The Daily to take full advantage of the visually-driven and interactive nature of the iPad and specifically, the only made-for-tablet daily news platform, The Daily, to execute a truly unique and interactive creative execution for Pepsi MAX. By signing on for a launch sponsorship of The Daily, Pepsi MAX was able to effectively experiment with this over-the-top and all-around fun execution that would resonate with The Daily readers—early adopters and sports-fan tech enthusiasts.

What made this execution interesting or special?
The “Take your iPad to the Max” HTML5, full-page interactive execution featured a carousel of activities via a “Spin the Bottle” call to action, leveraging the iconic bottle to engage the consumer in high value play activities that tap into the iPad’s native functionalities and capabilities, like tap, pinch, scrub, gyroscope, and more:

• Zoom: Readers could pinch their displays to zoom up to “100,000,000x” on a Pepsi Max bottle unveiling vignettes like Pepsi Max bubbles with the Mona Lisa inside, Snoop Dogg on a throne drinking his Pepsi Max, or a close up on a pug in a bow tie. Once reaching the point of 1 Billion times magnification, the ad serves an over-the-top voiced-over vignette about the universal origins of Pepsi Max.
   
• Palm Reader: Readers were invited to place their hand on the iPad screen, where their palm would be “read” by swipe of the Pepsi Max bottle. They would then be delivered a fortune, like “Ah, your future looks very good, my friend. Except in 2013, when you try to bring back the bowl cut. Don’t do it. It never comes back.”
   
• Shake: Readers were asked to shake their iPads, to “See the power of maximum Pepsi taste”. Once shaken, the bottle on the screen explodes into an atomic cloud of Pepsi Max flavor.

Joe Laszlo’s Take:
This is a simple, well designed format that seamlessly transitions the viewer from an in-app banner creative to a full-screen, immersive video experience and back again. It’s a great example of an execution that gives a viewer a new insight about a brand without dragging them off to the web or a landing page, or overly disrupting their larger app experience, and I can imagine it “clicking” with a lot of other marketers.

Brief Description of Execution:
Lexus’ ‘The Next Big Thing’ tablet ad was featured in a tap to video execution that ran in the Yahoo! Sportacular iPad app. The ad was enabled by Medialets and developed by Team One. The campaign made use of the iPad’s video capabilities by displaying a long form, TV-like ad featuring the world’s most advanced driving simulator.

What made this execution interesting or special?
The TV like advertising experience on a device a personal as a tablet was both new and engaging.