The repetitive way that Google ads run on the side of the search result, all link and description plus sites, is dull and bores many to hell and back. That's why a German car rental client of the BannerBlog decided to ask for something different, something to make the person searching now at a glance what their company is offering and why it should be the one being used instead of the competition.

The result is ASCII Art, as you can see in the picture on the left. But, whether this is actually something that went online and worked for a while, or it was just a publicity stunt from Sixt, the respective client that asked for this to happen, it's not clear yet. The BannerBlog says that the ads were up and running, but at some point, a Google filter for repetitive punctuation kicked in and decided to ban them. Meanwhile, under the post relating it, people have begun talking that this never ran with the Mountain View based company and claim to have spoken to people there about it.

Who to believe? I personally think that this is a scam aimed at us and blasting the brand name all over the place. But I'm not making my mind up after long discussions about filters that were always there, but just recently decided to start acting as they should, I'm not even thinking about talking to somebody at Google. And you know why? Because if there was ever the slightest possibility for this to happen, ASCII would have been all over the place with the search engine and that couldn't have not attracted some attention.

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to embed the video that they provided, but they didn't give the opportunity, so I'm linking you to the page where you can view it yourself. It's quite interesting, but unfortunately it's a concept that will never fly, I think.