Short Attention Span

Mine is when it comes to online advertising. guidelines for online video advertising seem to advocate 30 second spots being the new online "standard". Terry's absolutely right, 7-10 seconds is about perfect when it comes to ads before online content.

There's a practical reason for the 7-10 second figure above and beyond short attention span. Beyond showing me the advertisement, those few seconds buy some time to pre-buffer the real content. If a site is packaging their content correctly, the video you really want to see is loading in the background while you watch the commercial. You could see a Loading... message cycle on the screen, or the video provider could offset their costs by serving an advertisement while the data loads behind the scenes. In theory, this becomes less necessary when more people get broadband, but in the meantime, the 7 second clip loads quickly and plays while the good stuff buffers behind the scenes.

It seems the advertisers are the ones with short attention spans. The reason everyone gets a TiVo or uses fast forward is so the commercials are easier to skip. And apparently they forget that a more successful strategy is to get me to the content and serve advertisements around the play window as I'm watching.

Posted by Jake

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Short Attention Span

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