The Media Section of USA Today printed an amusing article on what they call interactive print ads.

The Web has an unlikely new rival when it comes to “interactive” advertising: magazine pages, writes Laura Petrecca of USA Today.  As technology for song-producing audio chips and light-powering batteries gets smaller  and cheaper  marketers are using the devices in print ads. For instance, a button on a new Yellow Tail wine ad sets off four blinking firefly tails.

The challenge, Petrecca says, is to stand out amid the clutter by whatever innovative (or inventive) means necessary.

Even low-tech print ads have even taken the interactive factor a notch higher. Advertisers have started to add offbeat objects for consumers to “play” with such as temporary tattoos, plant seeds, and even a 3-foot-long replica of an Ultimate Fighting Championship belt.

“The average American adult is exposed to about 3,000 advertising or brand messages a day,” says Rob Gregory, group publisher of men’s magazine Maxim. “If you’re going to be that one in 3,000 that gets remembered  or even noticed  you have to have something that is unprecedented.”

If the trend continues to evolve, we should expect more quirky advertising like, says Philip Sawyer, director of GfK Starch Advertising Research. Technological advances have made multifaceted magazine advertising easier to do.

A GfK study released last November also discovered that “spectacular” print ads (those that had extra oomph, such as scent strips, audio chips or even more pages in a layout) stick in readers’ minds.

An “emotional” connection makes such ads stand out, says Tim Clegg, CEO of Americhip, which creates magazine inserts such as the blinking Yellow Tail ad. In a digital world, “People still communicate with sight, touch, taste and smell.