Over the past few months, iFilm, a site with free streaming videos, has been undergoing incremental changes. Although it's still a bit garish, the design has received some nice esthetic as well as important structural changes that make it easier to use as well as slightly more attractive. iFilm's recent changes fit nicely into the category of a 'realignment' as opposed to a 'redesign', a subject Cameron Moll described really well on A List Apart recently. Videos are easier to browse, links to watch the videos get much better focus, and generally it's easier to figure out the interface at a glance.

One especially interesting area they've improved has been their advertising. iFilm has always had a ton of advertising, but it's one of those sites where you feel like you're really getting some decent content in exchange for the assault on your eyeballs — they obviously have to pay for all that bandwidth somehow. Some of their advertising is downright annoying such as the splash page... but at least you can easily skip past it. Other areas are fairly clever, such as forcing you to watch an ad for about ten seconds before your video starts. It only happens with every few videos and it's really really short, so you often don't bother skipping past it manually (which notably you can easily do) and it's never led me to scream obscenities at my screen.

With their latest design iteration, which I only noticed earlier today, they've added something really interesting. The main advertisement on the page is integrated right into the normal top of the site. Currently when I go, I see an ad for the game "Call of Duty 2" and it fits right into the page, even going behind the top menu and the iFilm logo. As opposed to blocky banner ads, which almost always feel patched into a layout as an afterthought, this feels fairly organic and I find it is surprisingly nonintrusive. There are certainly drawbacks — it obscures the navigation, the ad has to be specifically designed to fit in the space, it is a bit distracting — but it is pretty innovative and is a good solution to a necessary evil (in a design sense if not an ideological one). Note that sometimes they show a normal banner ad overlaying it, so I've taken a screenshot of the version I'm talking about for you to see.

Also note that the Kermit the Frog video for Target, which you can see in the screenshot, is totally worth watching.