Ad of the Week: Velveeta Video Takeover on omg!

The Velveeta blacksmith has arrived on the omg! homepage to smite cheesy skillets while inviting you to forge your own story

To tell the story of you, the blacksmith, and those golden cheesy skillets, Velveeta has forged a molten-hot custom rich media execution on omg!, Yahoo!'s golden celebrity lifestyle site.

The first clang and spark of the hammer is a 955 x 755 screen that invites you to watch the video. What follows is a 15-second teaser orientation of the blacksmith's shop, the liquid gold cheesy skillets, and a golden-bound tome about their creation by the blacksmith and you.

After the teaser, you can close the screen, watch again, or "Forge Your Own Story" in Our Book of Liquid Gold. You might be tempted to strike your hammer on the latter choice after taking in the rave reviews along the bottom of the video screen ("My Favorite Story Starring Myself and a Blacksmith." ~You).

Upon closing the screen to get back to celeb gossip, the skillets split up into two graphical elements: the 300 x 250 block of gold on the right with a link to Our Book of Liquid Gold, and a 955 x 60 slice of cheese along the top with a button to relaunch the video.

All the while, the page remains framed in a rich backskin featuring the blacksmith on the left and the Book of Gold on the right.

The first clang of the ad's interactivity is making the user one-half of the story behind its skillets, a theme parlayed into a custom ad format and its centerpiece user-initiated video. With two graphical elements poured into the mix and welded to a background, this ad hammers home the advantage of user engagement that you'll only find in Yahoo!'s digital ad workshop.

Click here to forge your story.

-- Thomas T. Lady