You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Products:
Various and/or sundry

The Promotions:

The Pitch:
We advertisers have developed an enemies-to-lovers relationship with the “Skip Ad” button.

YouTube has had a profound effect on the way commercials are made. While there’s plenty of behind-the-scenes stuff involving algorithms and targeted marketing that someone far more knowledgeable than me could delve into, what I want to talk about is the impact of YouTube’s “Skip Ad” button.

The ability for viewers to skip over nearly the entirety of the ad after seeing just the first five seconds, that’s a new challenge that advertisers have been trying to work around. Some have tried making commercials that are only five seconds long to begin with, so by the time you’re able to hit “Skip”, it’s already over. Another approach (common in movie trailers) is to make a regular length commercial, then edit together a few key bits of it into a five-second teaser at the beginning – if people watch the whole thing, great; if not, at least they saw the five-second version.

But then there are these ads, which comment directly on how most viewers will never see more than the first five seconds of the commercial, even having characters point at the “Skip Ad” button and urge people to give it a click.

I think that’s quite the clever strategy. For many people, clicking “Skip Ad” has become an automatic process, so anything that even gets them thinking about the “Skip Ad” button is likely to slow them down for a second or two. And after that’s past, a sort of perverse incentive starts to kick in: if the commercial wants me to skip the ad, then maybe I’m gonna watch the whole thing, that’ll show ’em.

It works on me, but then, I’m someone always on the lookout for new ads to feature here.

I’d been planning an Ad Space on these sorts of ads for a while, but I got the motivation to finally do it after last week’s Ad Space had beloved commenter Sad Clown post a comedy sketch, which explored the horrifying implications of living inside a skippable ad: