“You have 15 seconds to “WOW” me.”
This is the message audiences send to advertisers, marketers, and entrepreneurs when watching pre-roll and online video ads.
With consumers getting busier, technology more sophisticated, attention spans shor–wait what were we talking about? Oh yeah! Shorter… it now falls to creative types (and anyone creating ads and video content) to come up with dazzling new ways to get message across in a minuscule amount of time.
But how have we reached this point? Why do 46% of video consumers say anything longer than 15 seconds is too long? What happened?
Some would say we’re all just busier at work with no time for ads. Others would claim they just came to see specific content on YouTube and skipped right over everything else. “The Internet is too cluttered.” “I don’t trust ads.” “I multitask instead of watching ads.” The list of reasons goes on and on.
But the real answer is: avoidance.
Viewers tend see online ads as interruptive, irrelevant, annoying, or too frequent. They equate them with TV ads interrupting their content and aim to avoid them, frantically searching for the “Skip Ad >>>” button (often not an option) like using fast forward on the TV’s DVR.
What can you do to make your video ad stick?
Here are a few tips to help break that barrier and avoid avoidance:
- Make your ad relevant, engaging, and to the point for your target audience
- Create urgency – a fear of missing something awesome that all their friends love
- Target viewers when they’re not working (morning, night, and weekend ad launches)
- Capture viewer intensity and duration with time tradeoffs that are worth it (Informative + Entertaining ads = effective “informataining” ads)
In a world where online ads fall right below celebrity gossip, it’s important to remember that attention is currency, and you must always work (smart and fast) to earn it.
