No more annoying banner ads in Time Out’s banner swap campaign via Cheil Hong Kong
Time Out’s mission is to help its readers make the most of their time out. But in a busy city like Hong Kong, getting more people to read Time Out is a tough sell. So Time Out switched their strategy.
People will always find time to check out their favourite websites. But on their favourite websites, there’s one thing they could do without – annoying banner ads. So Cheil Hong Kong created the Time Out ‘Banner Swap’ – replacing annoying banner ads with up-to-date highlights on what’s happening in their city. Using ‘pop-up blocker’ technology built into the Chrome browser people could replace thousands of ads on all their favourite sites with: Things to see and do, The hottest new places to go, Restaurant and movie reviews, The weekend’s best events and more.
Time Out ‘Banner Swap’ also recognises keywords – making the content relevant to the sites visited. So in line with Time Out’s tagline of ‘Know Your City’, people are always in the know – on every site, every time they refresh, all over the worldwide web. And if something grabs their attention, they simply click through to read the full article.
The campaign was short listed at Spikes Asia 2014 in the Digital: Web Banner category and was a finalist in Cannes Lions 2014 Media : Use of Digital Platforms category.