For the past 3 days I have been bombarded with a rather “not so interesting” video ad on YouTube. Every time I try to watch a video, this video appears in pre roll. Every single time I skip it after 5 sec, I have no idea what the video is, what its trying to say and the brand behind it. Only when it starts to be a bit too annoying that I start to take note of the brand so I could write this post.
This is a 3 mins video ad from a big brand and it seems to be a CSR video or something of sort. Anyway I am not patient enough to watch past the 30 sec mark to know the full details (even for the research purpose of writing this post).
A couple of things that I guess fundamentally go wrong here:
- Targeting option: when I try to watch Video Games video on YouTube, I am not interested in watching some random videos. Basically I want to relax. Please consider the context when showing your video ad.
- No frequency cap: please cap your frequency per user per day when you advertise on YouTube. Normally users really don’t like being targeted excessively on YouTube. I think a maximum frequency of 3 per user per day is more than enough. YouTube may need to implement the option to negatively target users who skip the same video ads more than twice per day. Because I reckon if someone skips the ads twice per day, showing the same ad to him/her doesnt make sense.
- Video length: a 3-min TVC repurposed for YouTube is Not ideal. I don’t even know what the brand is after skipping it 5 times. Please look at the report from YouTube about the % of people who do Not reach the half way mark to understand the effectiveness of your video and the ROI of your campaign.
- First impression counts: please make your first 5 sec counts because users could skip the ads after 5 sec so no matter how great your video is, if you can’t convince someone after 5 sec, that’s it, you waste your advertising dollar.
In conclusion, please put yourself in the consumer shoes when planning the media campaign.
P.S: by the way, as a consumer I don’t like non-skippable video either. It feels like a torture every time I have to see a video ad on YouTube, and can’t skip it. My attitude towards the brand showing the ad (if I am upset enough to notice the brand) is not great in those instances.
P.S: This is an example of video ad that is done right. I willingly watched this ads for the whole 5 mins, told my colleagues about it and even tried to subscribe to Beats Music. Mashable wrote a post about this ads, it showed up on my Facebook News Feed and I chose to watch it. Great experience!
