ESPN excercises its creative muscles with iPod Touch ad

ESPN is taking a page out of YouTube's book with a new ad featuring the iPod Touch on its homepage. While that ad is no longer active this morning, here's a screenshot from yesterday:

The ad uses some Flash tricks to actually manipulate the page while it's running. In the above screenshot you can see how it bounces the navigation tabs around as the iPod Touch twists and moves while playing a typical game. The live effect is really cool and is very similar to what the Wii did with YouTube last year. In that ad, the video playing demo of the game Wario Land: Shake It ends up shaking the underlying YouTube page into a giant pile or rubble. It's very cool.

While the ESPN ad doesn't go to those extremes, it's still a very creative integration nontheless. ESPN has begun pushing the envelope more and more beginning with its edgier redesign in late 2008. By the looks of the iPod ad, they're sprucing up their advertising opportunities in addition to their navigation and visual design.