When youre as entrenched in this industry as we are – and as you no doubt are too – its actually quite rare to be impressed by a piece of mobile marketing you see out in the wild. Occasionally, though, a piece of creative is inventive or well-executed enough to catch your eye. Thats why weve started Creative Showcase, an irregular feature celebrating any smart campaigns we come across.

In this instance, the creative in question is a rich media ad for the recently-released PC and Xbox game Superhot. You can see the creative in motion at the bottom of this post, but first a quick explanation of why its so smart.

At first glance, the ad looks a static image. But as the user scrolls up or down, the image comes to life and moves in time with their swipes. This isnt the most technically complex execution youll ever see, but its a neat representation of the USP of the game being advertised: Superhot is a shooter where time only moves when the player does.

More importantly, though, this conceit fits right into existing user behaviour. When you scroll past the ad, not really noticing its presence – as you naturally do when reading anything vaguely compelling online – it starts to change. This, of course, is why autoplay videos are effective – the human eye is naturally attracted to anything moving – but here its taken a step further because it invites the user to work out whats happening, and scroll back up to check if theyve got it right, bringing them right back to the ad unit and its call-to-action.

Of course, it helps that Superhots minimalist visual design is so striking, even when compressed to fit a mobile banner, but its a smart bit of creative that gets you to really look at that design.

Check out the ad in its full GIF glory below: