Bytemarks
Best and latest TV ads just a click away

By Burt Lum

The American public has a love-hate relationship with advertising. Television ads come to mind as prime perpetrators of this bipolar effect.

Most of the time we loathe TV ads. They steal precious moments from our favorite shows and often bore us with insults to our intelligence. At other times they become the center of attraction, as during the NFL Super Bowl, when high-budget ads are more entertaining than the game itself.

Now if I tell you there is a Web site that is nothing but ads and all you will be doing is clicking on each and every one, you might say I was crazy to think you'd be interested. Well, crazy or not, the site is www.adcritic.com. At Adcritic.com, the content is predominantly TV ads — the best and the latest, assembled in one place. I found this site so engaging I've been laughing to myself as I explored it.

In order to get a full appreciation of all this video, you need to rev up your Windows Media Player and broadband connection. All the ads here have been pre-selected and voted for, each weighing in at several megabytes.

Each ranks pretty high on the entertainment scale. When they're seen all together like this, you can gain an appreciation of the creative juices that go into a good 30-second spot. The Budweiser ads rank among the best, with the Alien Wazzup ads coming in at number seven this week. Also in the Top-10 is IBM's parallel universe programmer ad campaign. I find it a treat to have all these ads just a click away. Many I have never seen, and most have not even aired in Hawai'i.

The one side-buster I caught myself laughing at was listed as No. 2 in the top 100 commercials. It is titled "President Clinton: Final Days." As with advertising, you either love this guy or you hate him. "Final Days" shows Bill Clinton concluding his days at the White House. I won't even describe it since it's too funny. Let's just say he had a lot of time on his hands. Likewise, Adcritic.com is going to turn you into an ad-watching junkie with too much time on your hands. ;-)

Burt Lum, cyber-citizen and self-anointed tour guide to the Internet frontier, is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net.