Would You Skip It?
October 25th, 2011How much time does an advertisement have to capture an audience? Well, if you asked a regular Youtube user, they’d say 5 seconds.
When watching a Youtube video with an advertisement, you have the option of skipping the ad after 5 seconds. The quality or appeal of a commercial played on Youtube can, thus, be measured by the percentage of people who decided to not skip the ad. That is, they wanted to watch the commercial.
This is an interesting way to think of commercials, as many of us see commercials as painful interruptions from the content for which we actually have interest. Thus, we cannot create commercials that simply tell the audience the name and service of the company anymore. We should begin to shift to a new paradigm where the commercials are as good, if not better, than the content that follows it. We need to make commercials that are worth watching from the moment it begins.
So how do you know when you’ve created a commercial worth watching. Well, give me five seconds.