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Thanks for joining us, I am feeling it!
Today’s Feature Story gives you a heads-up on what consumers hate about video ads (based on nearly 200 opinions). Use this intel to improve your ads. Then we’ll get to…
- The Knowledge Base
SelfHelp (salad w/ a side of weirdo)- Facts & Stats
- Get Hacking (AI handles this one for ya)
Now let’s get inside the heads of people who have useful opinions about video advertising they’re seeing.
Video Ad Examples & Elements People Don’t Like
Let me start with nine bullet points highlighting negative opinions. Then I’ll list video ad examples and elements that produced more positive opinions.
What people dislike:
- Seeing the same ads over and over.
- Ads that are intrusive to viewing experience.
- Streaming services that were initially ad-free but now have ads.
- People said they avoid/skip ads by muting, changing channels, fast-forwarding recordings, looking at a second screen, or using ad-blockers.
- Pharmaceutical ads were particularly disliked with those long lists of side effects.
- Political ads are seen as a nuisance (aka loathsome).
- Ads are seen as dishonest, exaggerated, or filled with lies (ouch!).
- Pushing a particular political or social agenda is extra annoying.
- Ads are perceived as not adding value.
These feelings apply to advertising generally, too, and remember, they’re not my opinions. It’s what The Public is saying about video ads.
They do admit a few positive aspects of video ads though…
Video Ad Examples & Elements People Like
- Ads can be tolerated if they have an element of humor.
- Ads from the 1960s-1990s were mentioned as memorable and great (e.g., Apple’s 1984 ad, Coke’s Hilltop ad, and Miller Lite’s Tastes Great/Less Filling campaign).
- A few people said they don’t mind some ads if the content is free or low-cost as a tradeoff.
- Ads are occasionally entertaining and worth watching, though this was clearly the exception rather than the norm based on comments.
Those video ad example opinions give you food for thought on your next campaign. Even if it isn’t a video ad.
So, mix in humor and entertain. Be creative. When possible, connect the ad to the content (example coming below), or at least learn more about the audience who will be watching the type of content where your ad appears.
Let’s look at a few more annoying video ad examples that make consumers despise the ad (if not the brand altogether).
Video Ad Examples & Other Ads That Get on People’s Nerves
- HubSpot: 58% of respondents said pop-up ads that negatively impact user experience are the most annoying type of digital ad (gurus say these ads are effective, though).
- A RevJet study found 100% of consumers will skip pre-roll ads whenever possible.
- Autoplay video ads with SOUND.
- Repeating myself, but 72% of consumers dislike brands with repetitive messaging – RevJet. (note: “disliked brands” not the ad itself!)
- Slow page loads due to an onslaught of ads.
- Full-page ads (especially on phones): 73% of consumers expressed negative attitudes towards this ad format (Blockthrough survey).
- Misleading advertising formats designed to get inadvertent clicks.
Time to wrap up with a couple of video ad examples I like a lot and why.
Video Ad Examples To Emulate
Two of the most memorable video ads to me are…
#1 Terry Bradshaw ‘stain on the shirt’ Tide ad
This ad used internet behavior, plus it connected the ad to the show content (Super Bowl). It trolled viewers to notice the stain on their own. The Public took the bait. The ad completed the story with a clean shirt the product, Tide, produced.
Know your audience. “Diet beer” was created (& flopped) like eight years before Miller Lite got in the light beer game. The beer-drinking audience did not care about calories, carbs, or even their own health! They liked beer and being entertained by sports figures. Every “Taste Great / Less Filling” video ad used those audience facts to turn beer lovers into light beer lovers.
This article inspired Today’s Feature.
Now for a word about an advantage major corporations have over other businesses.
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The Knowledge Base
Deeper audience research (includes video)
Ad costs rise, conversion rates fall again
💡Need more angles on B2B partnerships?
June 2024 content ideas (86 of ’em)
😔Impact AI is having on insurance claims (podcast)
Reddit sued over click fraud allegations
🤐How to become a life coach ($1.5-bil industry)
Ohio Lottery cyberattack steals 500k Social Security numbers
🧠How JavaScript rendering affects your site (brainiacs only)
Want a smarter kid? Put a pencil in her hand
Self Help
Hey, if it takes adding a hot dog or marshmallows to a salad to choke some veggies down – I approve.
That survey link also highlights ways to improve your salad without being a weirdo.
The most obvious improvement is to avoid futile attempts to make salads at home. You nor I have those skills, we don’t know what we’re doing, and a soggy lettuce head lingering in the fridge is inevitable.
Facts and Stats
- 43% of tipped workers say predefined tip amounts on point-of-sale systems are helpful to both guests & servers (SpotOn survey)
- 80% of brands said they increased creator budgets in 2023 & 36% planned to spend at least half their digital marketing budget on creators (Business Wire)
- Streaming ads often are 3x as expensive and up to 2x as expensive as ads running during entertainment programming on cable and broadcast TV, respectively (WSJ)
Bonus: “Weight neglect” refers to the tendency of consumers to focus more on the unit price (price per unit, like price per ounce) of a product rather than considering the total amount or weight of the product when evaluating deals and making purchasing decisions (Clemson University).
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Today’s Feature Story was helped along with Claude.ai and Perlexity.ai. These tools summarized and picked out key points from a mountain of data (comments about video ads).
A similar use case is analyzing LinkedIn comments with AI. Find out what wisdom is missing that you could add to the comments.
Also, check to see if most comments are meaningless (i.e., “Great content” or “I agree, Trevor!”) so you don’t fall into that trap as a commenter. Lastly, analyze how often original posters reply to commenters and what types of replies get as much engagement as the post itself (even if the engagement is from one person).
Thanks for making time for us. If you know another good-looking marketer, please share Inbox Hacking with them.
BTW – The 3 best subject lines in my inbox:
- “Why We Sent 500 Million Needles to Space” (troubling!)
- “😴 People love boring videos” (what’s wrong w/ us)
- “Burger King Meals That Even Employees Avoid”
The power wasn’t in the subject lines as much as those emails had great content ideas that got me to open.
Shane McLendon, Copy Kingpin – Inbox Hacking
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