YouTube has announced that it will be introducing an unskippable, 6-second bumper ads before certain videos.
These bumper ads are largely aimed at mobile users. Google sees these Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads.
According to Google, Bumper ads are ideal for driving incremental reach and frequency, especially on mobile, where “snackable videos” perform well.
The bumper ads will start appearing some time in May.
Recent research has shown that half of 18-49 year olds turn to their mobile device first to watch video. Even in the living room, many people prefer to watch on their smartphone.
So, Google made this marketing decision of introducing non-skippable short ads specifically for mobile devices.
The only way to avoid the ads is to pay for a YouTube Red subscription, which is an ad-free paid service.
Currently, the most common ad format on YouTube is over a minute long, but can be skipped after watching for five seconds.
So, the new Bumper ads are literally one-second longer than the current 5-second period before you can skip ads.
The idea of a short ad isn’t new — the name “Bumber Ad” suggests that the inspiration comes from those brief bumper videos you see on TV.
Audi Germany and Atlantic Records are already on board and have been testing the new format.
According to Google, Bumper ads work best when combined with a TrueView or Google Preferred campaign. In early tests, Bumpers drove strong lift in upper funnel metrics like recall, awareness and consideration. And Bumpers work well to drive incremental reach and frequency when paired with a TrueView campaign.
