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Would you believe it: Almost no one watches your video ads! Take your company employee hat off: Do you watch any other company’s video ads, if you have the choice to skip or swipe? Do you watch your company’s ads, if you have the choice to skip or swipe? The answer for you, me, our employee peers is likely no. Reason: Just as for our users… The ad’s in the way. When producing advertising, here’s the reality CMOs ignore: You are not competing against other ads. You are competing against the entire internet. All of it. If a human is actively watching your 60s ad on TV all the way to the end, the most likely reason is her phone’s battery is dead. Pause for reflection. This blog post was originally published as edition #489 of my newsletter TMAI Premium. Each week, I share strategic insights and actionable guidance on how to stay at the very bleeding edge of Marketing, Analytics, and AI-transformation. Sign up for TMAI Premium to accelerate your career trajectory. 100% of TMAI revenues are donated to charity. I am not advocating against video advertising. It is essential for effective and scalable brand marketing. I am advocating for ad creatives to embrace the decade-old reality of consumer behavior, media consumption, and attention fragmentation. I am for video advertising strategies that are built to recognize that attention is the most expensive currency on earth. To make the case for just how important this is… Here’s my synthesis of the data illustrating the average seconds of attention paid in each media channel, how much of that attention is with sound on (more effective!), and how much of your ad is watched all the way to the end… Video Ads: Attention Metrics [For a higher resolution image: Right mouse click > Open image in new tab.] Sobering, no? Big Insight: Active attention to an ad is contextual. And, brief. Increasingly: Just the first two seconds. Big Implication: A 60s TV ad is now, functionally, a 15-second ad with 45 seconds of background noise for most viewers. A 15s TikTok video ad is now, functionally, a 1s display ad view. Big Disappointment: Your Brand Marketing is largely delivering zero brand lift when measured with true test-control brand lift studies. If you are producing ads (“stories”) longer than 30 seconds – like the one- to five-minute sappy holiday creatives common this time of year – you are doing that purely for your own entertainment. Protect your career by not promising any business profits. The data above also explains why your TikTok / Reels / YT Shorts ad campaigns have almost never delivered brand lift with an above zero confidence interval – a massive waste of precious creative & Marketing budgets. [Note: TMAI Premium subscribers, carefully review TMAI #447: Confidence Intervals: A Brand Analytics MUST Have. Please email me if you do not have my awesome Excel model to compute your campaign’s real impact.] Why obsess about this? Effective Brand Marketing is the only way to grow Market Share over time. Video ads are a necessary tactic in that holy quest. Let’s embrace real consumer behavior, media consumption, and attention fragmentation. Shorter video ads. And, regardless of the ad length, front-loaded video ads with high-impact first two seconds. Wait, Wait, Wait… Loooong Ads Are Better! Like me, I’m confident you’ve heard a variation of this from your VP of Creative / Global Creative Director / CMO: Long creatives tell a better story, and people remember better stories. What does the data say? Data Fact One: Studies by Facebook’s Brand Lift team, Google/YT ABCDs find that shorter ads (6-15s) often drive equal or higher lifts in Ad Recall and Consideration than longer ads. (In part because they are less likely to be skipped or are unskippable.) Data Fact Two: Quantifying that… Research (Lumen/Teads) identifies that 15s ads drive 75-85% of the recall of a 30s ad – at half the media cost (Magna/IPG). Data Fact Three: If they hold attention throughout, longer ads (30s+) can drive higher emotional intensity and long-term brand affinity. Your VP, Director, CMO is right… Longer ads have additional value to offer! To deliver that special magic, long ad creatives have to solve three problems: 1. The long ad needs to be built to solve a different, long-term purpose. 2. If you just want to drive Unaided Brand Awareness, Consideration, or Purchase Intent, you can do so more efficiently with a shorter ad, while lowering resentment risk. The long ad creative needs to be super magnificently effective in the first 1-4 seconds. The creative has to be able to avoid the Skip / Swipe in skippable ad formats, and avoid the human looking away / going to the bathroom / looking down at their phone in the case of non-skippable formats. 3. The long ad creative needs to be supported by 3x – 6x additional media budget – when compared to the 15s ad media budget – to deliver the promised higher emotional intensity. Life Changing Insight: The modern battle for brand lift isn’t won by one long story; it is won by frequency of short, high-impact moments. No matter your ad length, if your ad is not seen x number of times over y weeks, it will not deliver impact. [Note: Premium subscribers deep dive and incorporate: TMAI #431: Impact of Ad Length on Campaign Cost.] It is difficult to meet these three magic-producing criteria, but it can be done. Use the ad length that is optimal for the business purpose you are solving for. Don’t use a jumbo jet to commute to Manhattan. Don’t try to cycle from NY to Chicago. Regardless of ad length/purpose, I’m confident you noticed that you really need to make the first two, three, seconds count. [Special Advice: The Ad Sales team at one particular ad platform aggressively champions the cause of looooooooooong ads. If you run into them, set all else aside and ask one question: How do we get distribution for the looooooooooong ads? If you get an affordable, scalable answer that spike and sustains, follow their advice.] An Ideal Video Ads Media Plan. Recognizing that effective Brand Marketing via video ads is not a one-size-fits-all, I want to sketch this starting point for your video ads strategy: Spark: 6s “Bumpers” / equivalent, will take a majority of your media budget (55-65%). They build frequency, recognition, and sustain your brand lift gains. Fuel: 15s / equivalent, will take nearly all of the rest of your media budget (25-35%). Ideally, sequenced with effective 6s ads so they would have gained interest to hear the rest of the story. Blaze: An occasional 30s (ideally non-skip) taking the remaining budget (5-8%), in big spike moments to support a specific brand feeling. Beacon: A rare, beautiful 60s film, not as an ad (0%), but organically seeded on social channels, shown in internal company meetings, submitted for industry awards. There can be small, occasional, variations. From my experience across industries and countries… For retail type companies, Spark takes up 70%. For B2B, Fuel can be up to 40%. For a revolutionary new product/company, Blaze temporarily can be 20%. Repetition: You will notice I’m consistently prioritizing frequency over length. Effective Brand Marketing is frequency-powered in an age where attention is the most expensive currency. Second repetition: Regardless of length, each type of video ad will have to start front-loaded, with a BANG. The first few seconds are critical to plant a memory, to generate interest in seeing rest of the story. Let’s learn how to do that. How to Be Creative: Zero 2 Interest in Two Seconds! Across all social video, users pay only 12 seconds of active ad attention for every hour(!!). Implication: Your share of voice is infinitesimal unless you disrupt their pattern. To do that, you have one to three seconds max. I’ll share data-identified effective creative tactics, for each channel. But first, there are five creative tactics that apply regardless of channel. Big 5 Universal Creative Effectiveness Truths. 1. Brand in 3. The brand must be recognizable within 3 seconds (logo, color, sonic signature, character). 2. Frame-One Impact. The first visual frame must tell a story or pose a question. (It is insanely difficult, that is what it takes to win.) 3. Sound as Lead, Not Support. Music, voice tone, and audio pacing drive emotional response faster than visual. 4. The “Why Now?” Answer the viewer’s unconscious question: “Why should I care about this right now?” (Reminder: Your ad’s competing against all the content on the internet.) 5. Creative Pre-Tested. The only way to win before you spend is to pre-test your creative – and ensure it passed in your ad’s media channel and your intended audience. For Concepts and high media weight Executions, use HMM Pro. For high volume, low media weight Executions, TikTok/Shorts/Reels, use HMM AI. These are super high standards for your creative teams to meet. In a world where you’ll get 12 seconds of ad attention per hour… Recommendations 1 – 5 above are mandatory. If you feel your video ads are falling short of the above truths: A. That explains why you can’t prove an iota of incremental impact from Brand Marketing on long-term Revenue. B. That should be a reason you pause your current video ad spend until your creative team/agency can deliver worthy creative. The Build Effective Creative Journey Continues. Every channel has its nuances. What works on TV rarely works on YouTube. What works on Reels often does not work for Facebook. Mobile video ads needs different Big Bang Two-Second start than if they are served on CTV. In TMAI #490 I’ve shared detailed best practices I’ve validated through testing and media tactics individually for Linear TV, CTV, YouTube Skippable, Facebook/Instagram Feed, TikTok/Reels/Shorts, and Snapchat. Lessons from approx. $10 bil in brand marketing spend analyzed. If you are a new TMAI Premium member, please email me if you can’t find edition 490 with detailed Part 2. If you are not, grab an annual Premium subscription here – the insights will transform your professional effectiveness! Bottom line. Our belief in the power of story is correct. Our canvas has changed. The 60-second spot is not dead, as illustrated above, it has a purpose in a Beacon strategy on free channels and for earning awards. The 60-second ad as interruption is dead. It does not perform as a media strategy. (Neither is there much inventory to buy. The platforms know it does not work!) Short-form creative is how we earn attention, and earn permission to tell our (slightly) longer, richer story. We are not abandoning our craft. Our quest remains legendary brand lift! The path we take to get there is new. Carpe diem. Avinash. PS: In the world of Chinese livestream sales, Zheng Xiang Xiang’s approach is super impressive. She sells 100 million Yuan ($19m) of products in a week. Don’t emulate it. Xiang Xiang operates within available attention. Appreciate that to become a better Marketer.

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