The essence of online banner ads are that they’re “so of the moment”. Take for instance the just launched March Madness banners we help build for our Client (who we will not name) to run exclusively on the ESPN.com web portal. Since they are promotional ads for people to sign up to the ESPN 2009 March Madness game, it will only run for a short time before the sign-up period time is over. Then these banners which took time to build/animate, then to make revisions with the client, QA, traffic with the ad servers and then run on-site — will soon never see the glaze of public eyes again. They will then live on the local drive of someone’s computer, to lay there until they are erased or totally forgotten.

Sort of reminds me of the Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. Every spring, they come to bloom, and for a period of 2 weeks people can interact, glaze, smell and appreciate their beauty. And then just like that, they fall off the branches of the trees, not to re-appear until another year passes. If you didn’t see them bloom for that short span, you would never have known they existed.

But thanks to our trustly ole’ server, I have one of the original banners March Madness banners here for you to view, even if it no lower will “bloom” in spring.

Here is another banner from the same campaign.