Do You Want to Know Why People Skip Ads?

Because they are not there for the ads, because they don’t have time, because…

As a marketer, you put in the extra hours to develop your cinematic ad, with product close-ups and manicured shots of the ideal consumer. You’ve added all the good stuff excessively: suspense at the beginning, emotional cues to trigger happiness, and an excellent product testimonial at the end glorifying the brand. Sadly, they are still skipping your ad. And they do that as soon as they can.

Why is that? Because:

• They don’t have 30 seconds to learn about your brand story; they don’t spend that much time watching their best friend, Insta Story.
• For many, advertising is just an annoyance preventing access to the desired cat viral video. Around 80% of viewers skip an ad before it finishes on YouTube.
• They don’t like to be tricked into watching a video, so don’t be rude — show your brand early, don’t think they won’t notice this is advertising.

Skipping advertising takes many shapes and forms: from clicking the skip button after 5 seconds on YouTube, from scrolling faster in your Newsfeed or right click on the Insta Story, to opening another tab on your browser, to reloading the web page in the hope that the ad will go away or even focus attention on another device entirely.

I don’t have a solution for fighting this behavior; even more, I don’t think you should fight it; you should understand it and make elegant choices on working with it. Last year, Google enabled three agency folks to share advice on making those smart and common-sense choices. You can find the article linked here.

In the end, as the most famous agency person in the world used to say, “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife” — David Ogilvy. No, it’s not Jon Hamm. Mad Man is not real.

Photo by Rachit Tank on Unsplash

Originally published at http://sorinp.com on September 24, 2020.