Video is the single most powerful tool in the marketer's arsenal. Be it a movie trailer, film/TV clip, music video or user-generated, video is what gets people buzzing the fastest. It is the crack cocaine of the online experience: fast, funny and addictive. Unlike pricey street drugs, however, video is relatively cheap -- free more often than not -- and it usually doesn't make you call in sick the next day.
How people actually consume video and what their pain threshold is for video advertising has become a hot-button debate. According to the recent OPA study, the answers are not what we were expecting: more people seem to tolerate longer video ads than their shorter, more palatable cousins. This flies in the face of the ever-popular notion that the 60-second spot is indeed dead, or if not dead yet, then very, very (send flowers quick!) ill.
What OPA has done is simply aggregate a group of answers that, when bundled together, form a percentage greater than the amount of people who prefer shorter ads. That is all well and good, but don't book your next 60-second pre-roll spot just yet…
What is not addressed in the study is the context in which the ad is experienced. More and more, the content and the commercial are blending, coalescing and creating new, more integrated permutations.
A random ad for mustard before a wildlife clip can seem woefully out of place, whereas a clever animated spot that leads in to an animated film trailer can make the entire experience seamless without losing retention.
Whether or not ads become more contextual (as some already are in the video game or 3D world settings), there needs to be a sense of continuity for the viewer. I hate, hate, hate pre-roll on a news clip. To me, there is nothing more galling than trying to watch an important piece of news and being forced to sit through a paper towel ad. But I may be in the minority. People are wonderfully adaptable creatures, and they can and will sit through anything, as evidenced by the astonishing staying power of reality TV.
So, I believe that ad length does not have to be in direct proportion to what was once the norm. Ad length should be determined by what is the best way to get that message out.
Once upon a time, TV viewers were a captive audience… until the remote control allowed them to change channels. TiVo lets you fast-forward through an ad, or skip it all together. Online, you are always just one click away from oblivion. The question isn't "how long do we have to pitch them before resentment kicks in?" but rather, "how quickly can our message be deployed in a truly memorable way?"