15-Second Online Ads Getting Their Moment
By Todd Wasserman
Monday, September 11 2006
Monday, September 11 2006
Published on AllBusiness.com
The 30-second TV ad may be dead, but the 15-second online video ad is thriving, at least for now.
In the past year or so, American Express, Warner Bros., National Car Rental and others have tried the format after finding that 30 seconds was too much time to ask of most Web surfers. A vocal minority also believes that ads running five seconds or less are the future.
Though no one tracks the popularity of 15-second ads versus other formats, online ad execs said the :15 seems to be the sweet spot for now. "The :30 is much too long. The consumer demand is for shorter ad units," said Jordan Bitterman, vp/director-media at Digitas, Boston, which has run :15s for AmEx. "Right now, the bulk of ads are :15s."
Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of Broadband Enterprises, an online video network, said many marketers are still just repurposing their 30-second TV spots to run on the Web, but his research has found that :15s work better. "BMW helped start it because they ran :15s and they tested very well," he said, adding that those ads scored completion rates in excess of 13 seconds, which is something "you can't say for 30-second ads."
Eric Frost, group creative director at Fallon, is another believer in 15-second ads. Fallon this year launched a bunch of 15-second TV spots for National Car Rental that played on the marketer's positioning, which promises that National is the quickest way to rent a car by showing the "world's quickest" events. In one ad, for instance, a very hairy guy is trying to play "charades," but as soon as he gets up someone guesses that he's trying to signal Planet of the Apes.
Since the ads worked well on the Web at 15 seconds, Frost said the agency has run other :15s. "From our standpoint, it's easy to take and recompress a :30," he said. "Just do a cut-down."
The :15's moment in the sun may be short-lived, though.
Arik Czerniak, CEO of Metacafe, an online video network, said even :15s are too long. Czerniak referred to the Web as "crouch-forward entertainment" and said since people experience the Internet differently than TV, they are less accommodating to TV-style ads. "You can't maintain that position for long. You'd have a lot of pissed off people if you made them wait 30 to 90 seconds," he said. Instead, Czerniak advocates five-second or even three-second video ads.
"Probably five seconds is too much," he said. "If you have a brand like Coca-Cola, you don't need more than three seconds to remind people who you are."
Eric Picard, senior product planner for MSN's monetization and ad planning group, agreed that the five-second ad is "really an emerging area" and said Microsoft plans to study the data on the format this fall
But while some, like Honda's Fit, have had success with the five-second format, most say it's not enough time to get any kind of message across. "Five seconds might work in a gaming environment just to get the brand name across, but it is still a little too short," said Sean Black, president of JL 360, a new interactive agency in Union, N.J.
Meanwhile, Tom Hubbard, director of account strategies at Euro RSCG 4D in Boston, said ads based on the interruption model won't work no matter how short they are. Instead, Hubbard thinks viral ads are the future of Internet advertising. This year, Hubbard has launched such campaigns for Symantec and New Balance, among others, and is steering other clients in that direction. "If there's one thing we've learned, it's that anything that is intrusive in any way is going to fail," he said.
In the past year or so, American Express, Warner Bros., National Car Rental and others have tried the format after finding that 30 seconds was too much time to ask of most Web surfers. A vocal minority also believes that ads running five seconds or less are the future.
Though no one tracks the popularity of 15-second ads versus other formats, online ad execs said the :15 seems to be the sweet spot for now. "The :30 is much too long. The consumer demand is for shorter ad units," said Jordan Bitterman, vp/director-media at Digitas, Boston, which has run :15s for AmEx. "Right now, the bulk of ads are :15s."
Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of Broadband Enterprises, an online video network, said many marketers are still just repurposing their 30-second TV spots to run on the Web, but his research has found that :15s work better. "BMW helped start it because they ran :15s and they tested very well," he said, adding that those ads scored completion rates in excess of 13 seconds, which is something "you can't say for 30-second ads."
Eric Frost, group creative director at Fallon, is another believer in 15-second ads. Fallon this year launched a bunch of 15-second TV spots for National Car Rental that played on the marketer's positioning, which promises that National is the quickest way to rent a car by showing the "world's quickest" events. In one ad, for instance, a very hairy guy is trying to play "charades," but as soon as he gets up someone guesses that he's trying to signal Planet of the Apes.
Since the ads worked well on the Web at 15 seconds, Frost said the agency has run other :15s. "From our standpoint, it's easy to take and recompress a :30," he said. "Just do a cut-down."
The :15's moment in the sun may be short-lived, though.
Arik Czerniak, CEO of Metacafe, an online video network, said even :15s are too long. Czerniak referred to the Web as "crouch-forward entertainment" and said since people experience the Internet differently than TV, they are less accommodating to TV-style ads. "You can't maintain that position for long. You'd have a lot of pissed off people if you made them wait 30 to 90 seconds," he said. Instead, Czerniak advocates five-second or even three-second video ads.
"Probably five seconds is too much," he said. "If you have a brand like Coca-Cola, you don't need more than three seconds to remind people who you are."
Eric Picard, senior product planner for MSN's monetization and ad planning group, agreed that the five-second ad is "really an emerging area" and said Microsoft plans to study the data on the format this fall
But while some, like Honda's Fit, have had success with the five-second format, most say it's not enough time to get any kind of message across. "Five seconds might work in a gaming environment just to get the brand name across, but it is still a little too short," said Sean Black, president of JL 360, a new interactive agency in Union, N.J.
Meanwhile, Tom Hubbard, director of account strategies at Euro RSCG 4D in Boston, said ads based on the interruption model won't work no matter how short they are. Instead, Hubbard thinks viral ads are the future of Internet advertising. This year, Hubbard has launched such campaigns for Symantec and New Balance, among others, and is steering other clients in that direction. "If there's one thing we've learned, it's that anything that is intrusive in any way is going to fail," he said.