While Outdoor advertising is mostly ugly, television ads universally inane, and radio advertising has arguably the worst creative (few creatives are experienced enough to use the medium well or have the budgets to maintain high production values) it is actually online advertising that I find the most annoying. However, as a nascent medium, the approaches used continue to evolve and banners, particularly flash banners, have continued to progress from the aggravatingly distracting (think lowermybills.com and their dancing video clips) to the growing movement toward branded entertainment. Google itself has created an entire department within their AdWords franchise to develop the concept.
Branded entertainment takes an established business model and moves it to the web. New content is being developed with the goal to entertain, not distract the user. The result is more and more engaged viewers, and a more positive brand association between the user and the sponsor. The latest 'name' to develop this type of material is Seth McFarland of Fox Television's "No Way I'm Letting My Kid Watch That" er, "The Family Guy". He is creating unique "webisodes" that will be syndicated through AdSense to sites targeting 18-34 year old men. The first ones from the Family Guy creator are sponsored by Burger King, which places an animated ad (also by McFarland) featuring the BK king mascot runs before the animated short plays. The content is ostensibly unrelated to Burger King or its products.
MacFarlane indicates that creating the webisodes frees him from the constraints of television (Really? It's Fox, its thirty minutes, not thirty seconds, and I don't find The Family Guy particularly restrained!) So McFarlane gets another creative outlet, Burger King gets access to prospective burger eaters, and those burger eaters are entertained instead of merely distracted.
Online advertising is quickly becoming the Cinderella of advertisers. Once only favored by media buyers, agency and other creatives are also now seeing the potential of building a brand online by entertaining and engaging customers online, not annoying them into submission.
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