In a first for YouTube’s Canadian homepage, visitors can interact with the site’s masthead ad today thanks to a promotion for the opening of Summit Entertainment’s Ender’s Game, distributed in Canada by eOne Films.

Developed and executed by Spoke Agency, a Toronto-based ad agency, the YouTube masthead is today transformed into a game, inviting visitors to watch a trailer and play the “Ender’s Game” by turning their mobile phone into a game controller.

When the user enters a unique shortened URL – which has to be typed manually into a mobile browser – an interactive page launches on their mobile.  The mobile then links with the desktop screen, launching a mini first-person shooter/simulator game in which the player becomes character Ender Wiggin, defending his battleship in space.

Once they complete the game, users are asked to share their scores on Facebook or buy tickets for the film’s opening weekend.

The two devices are linked through Google’s Double Click Rich Media technology using Channel Connect and an HTML 5 design on the mobile side, Jeff Greenspoon, CEO, Spoke, tells MiC. He says his team wanted to create the one-day online game without making the users download any extras in order to interact with it.

Greenspoon says the execution, which is meant to generate mass awareness for the movie’s launch while zeroing-in on males aged 18 to 24, was unique in its Canadian conception and creation.

“It is a cool execution because you don’t often see Canadian distributors pushing the limits of what you can do with technology and innovation,” he says. “It is often posters and websites that have been re-purposed from the U.S. that are used to promote movies in Canada.”