Banner ads have been populating the digital industry since its inception, but recently their presence has become more of a plague. Squares, rectangles, pop-ups and interstitial overlays have pushed a large portion of the population into the arms of ad blockers.With the holiday season upon us and billions of dollars in sales expected on Cyber Monday, brands are asking themselves, “how can we stand out?” Well, fashion retailers DSW and Timberland are turning to a suite of innovative, interactive ad formats from mobile rich media creative agent PadSquad.“Creative is the only tangible piece of a marketers campaign that users can actually interact with,” said PadSquad Founder and CEO Daniel Meehan. “Brands need innovative mobile partners to help ideate, develop and deliver the best user experience to support each specific story and message.”MarketingLand agrees with the assessment, recently writing about the state of interactive advertising and how creative, engaging formats are getting results across the board.The suite of formats include:

• Tilt Lookbook Unit: A motion-based ad unit with a tilt prompt which DSW used effectively, getting more than 39 million user initiated tilts across the lifespan of its campaign. DSW’s “The Spring Five” Tilt Lookbook Unit also enjoyed 312% more engagements than Celtra’s Overall Industry Engagement Benchmark.
• Mosaic Unit: Highly unique format with endless continuous scroll to distribute brand content/videos, which DSW leveraged to tell it's “what would you do” message. The “March On DSW” Mosaic Unit enjoyed 11,000 hours of video playtime over the duration of the campaign.
• Color by Tap: Adult Coloring Book: A highly unique mobile interactive coloring book game proved to be highly addictive throughout Timberland’s campaign “Coloring Book Game Featuring Nas” with engagement rates exceeding Celtra benchmarks by 300%.

“Our goal was customer acquisition and we weren't able to tell our brand story with standard banner placements on mobile,” Allison Holbrook, manager of digital media at DSW.  “PadSquad was easy to work with and had innovative creative so we are partnering with them for mobile rich media this Fall.”The storytelling methods come just in time for brands this holiday season, with holiday e-commerce revenue expected to surpass $100B. PadSquad has many new holiday campaigns launching in the coming weeks, and the NY-based company is working with a variety of major retailer and fashion brands this holiday season.For more on what we’re up to with innovative ad formats, check out MarketingLand, too.