The below got me thinking….
Who, after all, has actually ever watched a digital video ad? Such interruptions — nearly everybody in the business sniffs at the most common form, pre-roll, that unrelated, often skippable ad before the video — fly in like mosquitoes and are as annoyingly swatted away. And, save for the promise of extreme silliness, cuteness, humiliation or gore, who really is an eager viewer of Internet videos?
This morning I have been watching my own behavior. A few ads have played in the sidebar of sites, completely ignored by me. I let one run out while I tinkered in a separate twitter window on my Mac. So yes the ad played, but was it seen?
Like many people I will click out of an ad after five seconds when that option is presented.
What I won’t sit through is the thirty second pre-roll. I don’t care how excited I was to see the content, if you expect me to sit there for :30, I just won’t. My life goes on.
Fifteen seconds seems more tolerable. Probably because I can check twitter or my phone or scratch my nose and it is almost over. Still ignored, but at least not X’d out.
Solutions? Well, if I had that I would be a billionaire. I know that on radio I felt we should bring things full circle and go back to having Title Sponsored shows. Instead of The Bob Hope Show you had The Pepsodent Show, Starring Bob Hope. And the Pepsodent live reads would work their way into sketches. Similarly, you haven’t lived until you have heard Bing Crosby sing about Chesterfield cigarettes.
I think this could work for television as well, at least with comedies. I’m not sure there would be much of a difference between say The Patton Oswalt Show and The Sony Show starring Patton Oswalt,