Companies spend a lot of money on video marketing and video advertising, so it’s not surprising that there’s a significant body of research on these subjects. Thales Teixeira from Harvard Business School is one of the people conducting research on video ads.
People are inundated with advertising: TV ads, billboards on the road, ads at the start of YouTube videos. Teixeira’s research (2012) shows that in general, people do not like ads. Even when they like a particular video ad, in general, people don’t like ads.
In the past, people had few choices when it came to ads. When an ad appeared on TV, they could change the station or turn off the TV.
Now it’s sometimes possible to bypass ads. For example, some people may have technology that lets them skip an ad on a recording, or skip an ad on YouTube.
Because people don’t like ads, and because they now can often avoid them, ad designers have to be more savvy. Messaging has to come earlier, and the ads themselves have to grab and hold people’s attention (more on this later in this chapter).
People Don’t Like Brand Logos
In his research, Teixeira notes that people especially dislike seeing a lot of brand logos in ads. The more prominent a brand logo is, the more likely people are to skip the ad. This is true even for brands they like. So some advertisers are doing what’s called “brand pulsing”: placing their brand logo as unobtrusively as possible throughout the ad.
Takeaways
- Put the main message at the beginning of the ad, not at the end.
- Since people don’t like ads, don’t remind them they’re viewing an ad by placing the brand icon or logo prominently at the beginning.
- Don’t use the logo a lot. Instead, weave the logo subtly and infrequently into the storyline of the ad.
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