With credit crisis driving demands for ROI, should we not be putting a call to action within banners as opposed to hiding them post-click?

I have seen an ad that ran in Netherlands, (see it here). It was requesting users to give away their bank details/passport in a banner in order to sign up to Orange. The trade off was you were given chance to get a free mobile phone.

Such was the incentive that 500 people gave away their bank details in a banner!!! That to me is proper Direct Response advertising.

It wasn’t a pretty ad with lots of flashy lights, it just allowed functionality within a banner and as a result generated true ROI.

So if people are that open (insane?!) should we not be looking at finding ways to drive response where people are, rather than expecting them to go elsewhere? Would this not be a more cost effective way forwards for advertisers rather than blind buys hoping for clicks, then seeing a tiny fraction of those actually converting?

What would be the break-even point of paying for additional functionality within an ad for capturing data, over mass-buy of standard ads that can only be clicked upon?

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