The ad was created by LabPixies, a company that uses gadgets to create ads centered on content. "Our novel approach for marketing ensures that rather than just forcing your content on uninterested users, you can reach an ever-growing users community who are actively searching for content. (...) LabPixies builds campaigns based on your content and tools, which provide the user with a real taste of your product and brand."
It will be interesting to see if Google's collaboration with LabPixies will go beyond this Gmail ad and if Google will start to use gadget-ads to monetize the personalized homepage.
Note that the gadget above is detached from its AdSense context, so I'm not getting paid if you click on the links or play the videos. If you like it so much, you can even add it to your personalized homepage.
{ found by Digital Inspiration }