It is increasingly obvious that online attention spans are shortening. The length of time an audience is likely to spend looking at an individual piece of content is dropping dramatically, so this puts the onus on producers of this content to get to the point. Quickly.
Benjamin Royce has an excellent post about 5 second pre-roll video ads being the future, and this concept is backed up by research and implementation by MTV; the channel, some would argue, that gave the world ADD.
Let’s be honest, if you are clicking on a video on The Onion or Funny or Die, you don’t really want to watch a 30 second TV ad before watching a clip that may only be 15 seconds long itself. This is a developing film form, and even has its own film festival, now in its 3rd year.
So… you have 5 seconds to get my attention. What can you do, and is this an effective narrative time-frame?
What can be done in 5 seconds?
This Adidas ad for the All Blacks:
This group of film-makers on Vimeo – “Me Glasses”
This ad for milk:
This drawing competition for Cadillac:
“Justified Alcoholism”
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And so on. You get the idea.
If you’re attention span isn’t fried from looking at these samples, you can always listen to the full MTV insight on 5 second ads here.
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digital slander 