You have invested your time, money and resources into producing a video ad to put your brand out there. In comes YouTube with its option to allow users to skip the advertisements after first 5 seconds. Brands cannot get away with forcing static advertisements on consumers anymore. If your advertisement isn’t intriguing, consumers can and will ignore it with a click of their mouse.

‘Skip Ad’- A boon, not a bane

No kidding. The option given by YouTube to skip an ad after the first five seconds could be put to best of use. Let us see why.

Average human attention spans have been found to be less than that of a gold fish. It has been concluded that human beings have an average attention span of only 8 seconds. Now, doesn’t the five second window offered by YouTube seem generous? If you manage to capture the attention of consumers in those five seconds, it means that you have their complete attention. Not just this, one more fact that goes to prove that the skip option is a boon is that you only pay when users either watch your video advertisements over 30 seconds or engage with your content in some way. Anyone watching your advertisement after the first five seconds is a potential customer. So essentially you are paying only for taking your brands to the people who are or want to become your customers hence providing you with the whole picture of your video advertisement marketing.

Here is the real challenge. Want to make a difference? Want to put your marketing budget to good use and increase engagement and conversions?

Here is what you need to do to make the consumers actually view past the first five seconds:

Engage your audience

Social media is an active environment unlike television or radio. People expect to interact with the content, share and comment to let their thoughts be known. Hence, it is advised create advertisements through which you can interest your audience. Create video commercials that ask questions that are intriguing and require your audience to interact. Give them an option to convey their thoughts about the brand or your commercial through comments or forums. Make the users feel that their thoughts and opinions are important to you.

Connect with the users emotionally

Create a sense of déjà vu, nostalgia or suspense. Connect with your audience through your commercials. Your commercials should engage the emotions of the user within the first five second so that their attention is caught here. A sense of what is going to happen next or a feeling of familiarity with the concept will make them stay and watch all of the advertisement without skipping it.

Pick and choose your target network

Instead of forcing your ads on random YouTube users, pick and choose your target audience. YouTube lets you choose the channels, videos and the target audience with reference to their age, demographics, interests and previous interest in similar brands. This ensures that most users are actually people interested in your brand and hence would want to know more about it.

Use technology to your advantage

There are a lot of new formats and technologies coming up that can be used to make your video commercials different. Use the new formats to create commercials that are intriguing hence making the users stop and take a second look at your commercial. Use the latest technology to create commercials that make heads turn, ads that make users pause and take a look at the advertisement.

The YouTube TrueView can turn out to be a blessing in disguise because:

• It reduces your expenditure since you only pay when they watch over 30 seconds.
• You get a real idea of the number of people truly interested in your brand.
• Increases the standards of video commercials

Got more questions on video commercials for your social media campaign? We are all ears!

Need more advice? Feel free to contact us! solutions@imediabay.com