This study presents the circumstances of the expansion of promotional activities undertaken by territorial units and discusses the nature of non-standard forms of marketing communication. The main purpose was to identify and group unconventional – as opposed to those perceived as traditional – promotional activities carried out by Polish cities and regions in the past few years. Since these activities are innovative, they can be categorized as ambient media. Several examples are given for each of the promotional forms which were identified, namely product placement, urban games, photo codes, marketing events, unconventional advertising media, innovative channels of Internet communication and field marketing. The author based his discussion on many years of observing the marketing activity of Polish territorial units.