• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, August 7, 2024

Let’s take a quick survey.  How many of you, when given the option to skip a commercial interruption ad on TV, CTV or streaming video, let it play all the way through and watch intently, truly engaged in the ad because of its incredible relevance to you and your personal situation?  In case you didn’t sense it, that was sarcasm.

When given the option, we skip.  In fact, it’s something of a game.  We all try to tap the skip button as fast as humanly possible.  It’s like watching the swimming at the Olympics when they talk about how fast the response time is for the swimmer when they hear the gun and jump off the blocks.  That 1/100^th of a second is the difference between an interruption and the chance to get back to whatever you were watching.

The numbers vary depending on where you look, but somewhere between 65% and 90% skip the video when given the chance (sources being a study from IPG and one from OCR over the last few years). This is rather indisputable as a set of data: Our audiences do not like interruptive video ads.  And yet as an industry, we choose to ignore their point of view.  How sustainable is that?

As an industry, we do have a history of listening.  Pop-ups and interstitials were all the rage, but consumers heavily disliked them, so they went the way of the dinosaur (except on mobile, which is an entirely different article).

Why don’t we listen to the audience and find a better way to advertise in video?

Commercials are part of the fabric of advertising, and they do still have their place.  A commercial at the beginning and end of a program makes sense and creates a lot of value for advertisers.  I would even concede that one interruption at the midpoint is OK, especially in the case of free content.

The issue is when there are three or four interruptive pods with two to four commercials per pod.  That annoys the viewer.  In the case of streaming video, there are many more interruptions and some of them are forced viewing with no chance to skip.  These pods are proven to disrupt the experience and result in people leaving a show for good.

As an industry, we have options.  There are other ways to go that don’t require interruption.

Rather than suggesting answers, I am only trying to raise the point that we need to listen to the audience.  We must acknowledge that we have a problem when it comes to video advertising -- and we have to take our heads out of the proverbial sand in order to solve the problem.  If we don’t, we risk further alienating the audience whom we're trying desperately to reach.

What are the implications of ignoring the data?  At least 50% of the audience on streaming currently pause to avoid the ads altogether.  That number is probably going to increase over time because of the annoyance of interruption. If it grows too far, and the current trend of moving to streaming continues, you risk completely destroying an existing format that advertisers have depended on for years.  The ad industry needs commercials, but they need them in a manner that still is effective.  As more and more content goes to a VOD-esque experience with fewer live tune-in (beyond sports), we risk losing a format that we want and need.

As a marketer, I hope we start to listen.