Razzle dazzle

In the movie Minority Report (and indeed in many futuristic movies) advertisements are digital projections that accost a person walking down the street; in that film they even do a retina scan to get your personal file and target the ad just to you.

Now, of course the technology has not gotten that sophisticated yet, but here in Iceland they are certainly trying their hand at the "super distracting" advertisement. Not just images of barely clad bodies--advertisers have been exploiting sex appeal for a good 60 years. No, I am talking about how much the ads are animated, for lack of a better word. It is like a powerpoint presentation or something, with the text floating in from the side, the image morphing, changing color, all within the little box that should just be a nice photo and some simple text. These are ads on websites and blogs, of course, digital media. They are especially sophisticated on visir.is and mbl.is.

It is a surecut case of razzle dazzle. And thus I include a picture of Richard Gere in his wonderful performance in Chicago of the song Give em the old razzle dazzle.







In other words, razzle dazzle is supposed to be an American thing. We invented advertising, we go for the huge banners on the sides of buildings, we insert commercials all over our television shows. And yet, in the case of these animated online advertisements, American online media is WAY BEHIND! I started noticing this a few months ago, and have been diligently double checking when I go on CNN.com or even BBC whether or not my impression is mistaken. And it is not. No where else have I seen anything like the image-dance of mbl.is and visir.is. 
I was really curious as to why this might be the case. Is it just because Icelandic advertisement firms had way more money on their hands back in the good old days? Is it because Icelanders are so easily distracted that they have to have something screaming for their attention before they will look at it? Or is it just that Icelandic graphic know-how surpasses that of the U.S. and England?
Yesterday I found out the answer, and it was rather mundane. Turns out Iceland has an amazing infrastructure for highspeed internet, such that every Icelander can visit mbl.is and their connection will not bog down with the constantly changing images. In the U.S., on the other hand, plenty of people are still living with dial-up, so the media outlets have to design for lower capacity users.  
While many mysteries evade me, I have at least this one is somewhat solved. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
hehe, and then the more advanced of us have an app installed in Firefox so we won't see the ads :D
October 31, 2009 at 5:18 PM
Lissy said…
then you are missing out on the whole kama sutra dismembered body that as supposed to be sexy ad!
October 31, 2009 at 11:34 PM
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