Time to hold your hands up - digitally speaking that is.

"Skip The Ad" - Who can't wait for that few initial seconds to be over so you can get to see the content that sparked your interest in the first place - the short answer is circa 90% of us - and if that's true - why, oh why, do retail marketing teams think the consumer will behave any different than them to their ads?

In August 2019  'YouTube' (Google) introduced a feature that prevents you and me from skipping some of those ads, and if that wasn't bad enough the ones you have to view are going to be 15 seconds long, which if you are made to watch the 6 second ad today, it will feel like an eternity.

It's said that UK consumers only watch an ad for 2.4 seconds on average before skipping, with the nation’s ad skipping rate at 52% compared to 57% in the US.

It's telling us that with the Tsunami of digital intrusions which currently sits somewhere between 4k - 10k per day that's constantly clogging up our browsing and viewing experience that today brands have just 2.4 seconds to get their message across - which has got to be one of the definitions of utter brand marketing madness?

I don't know about you but  I for one have ever thought "I think i'll commit to watching 20 minutes of adverts today". But without really thinking about it I'm spending that and more consuming content I'm interested in and can relate to, along with 'discovering' other stuff from my peers, friends, and sometimes family - mainly on one social media platform or another.

I came across this article on MarketingLand.com (link below) that says;

If you wanted to see a Google ad exec’s eyes light up last spring, you just had to bring up the Discover feed, the personalized news feed perched right on the Google mobile home page. The company announced ads were coming to this whole new surface that reaches some 800,000 monthly mobile users.

Let's assume that when Google bought 'YouTube' back in the day it had a strategic eye very much in its future. YouTube is the second largest search engine after the parent, once people are on the platform the dwell time is immense and brands want access to be able to interrupt those content hungry eyeballs.

'Content Discovery' by definition puts you and me in control, we are happy to spend more time on subject matters that we can relate to, and during that time we're also open to other topics as long as the content is in context with where we started our 'discovery' in the first place.

So if you wanted to gain traction and eyeballs by 'relevant' audiences and consumers instead of advertising which carries a 50-75% fraud penalty for every £/$ spent what could you do?

1) Think Media - Not content - entertain and inform, but make it feel real. We can all smell an advert dressed up as something else a mile off.

2) Think Media - Not adverts - With the influx of D2C brands (and their inevitable competitors) playing fast and loose in the digital ad space, more marketing £/$ are needed to compete for the same impressions.

3) Think Authenticity - Not Corporate - Leverage Employee advocacy to unlock stories about your brand, people don't watch or read your brand police polished stuff anyway.

$230 Billion+ is the figure forecast to be spent on mobile ads in 2020, as with other channels and devices it's an extremely lucrative area for fraudsters, but not so for those who are paying.

How about just trying to be social?