Written for AdWeek, Thursday 12th May. 

A round-up report from eMarketer, specializing in mobile advertising, recently landed in my inbox. On page three, a table of completion rates for U.S. digital pre-roll caught my eye. It claimed that, on average, completion rates for pre-roll ads on smartphones was 77 percent, rising slightly to 79 percent on tablet.

The vast majority of brands and advertisers understand the difference between a non-skippable pre-roll, which obliges a user to watch an ad before viewing video content, or a skippable format, which allows the user to decide whether or not to watch the ad. What is perhaps less well understood is the difference in performance across KPIs that these two buying options will deliver. A non-skippable pre-roll can achieve the highs of 80 percent completion pretty easily (after all, how many people abandon watching a video because of a 15-second ad?) whereas a very successful skippable pre-roll would be looking at a 40 percent completion rate.

This does not mean that the skippable pre-roll is delivering poor results, although seeing them side-by-side in an Excel spreadsheet might make a junior planner very nervous.

There are arguments for using both types of advertising—skippable ads are far more user-friendly, and the people who do watch your ad are probably genuinely interested in the message, unlike users who cannot skip and merely want to watch the video content after the trailer. On the other hand, non-skippable ads do mean more people see your message and, on average, this type of advertising tends to be cheaper.

Read the full article on AdWeek here.

Trust Smart Car to make something actually watchable as well as making products that are remarkably easy to park and drive. In terms of high quality, natural comedy, this ad takes the biscuit – telling its users to undergo a lie detector test whilst driving the new smart fortwo car across a town square.

It’s a fantastic video with some hilarious moments – people are always side tickling when put on the spot and making some frank and slightly disturbing confessions.

Check out the new smart advert here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKQLiBF7eEw

The concept is startlingly good – the sort of tongue-in-cheek video campaign completed by short snappy footage – and means that Harvey Nichols should hypothetically be onto a winner. Pick famous people through history, make a joke about their fashion sense; the whole series makes some great comments about the looks of eminent individuals – including Obama, Einstein or Darwin.  However, for a brand that deals specifically with both male and female branding, it feels strange that they’ve only picked out men – why not make a note about the looks of Marie Curie or Aung San Suu Kyi? History may be dominated by men, but why not put some women in the mix. Also, since when was Boris Johnson a great person? The former mayor doesn’t exactly rub shoulders with Obama or the person who discovered the nature of relativity.

Anyway, we’ll leave you to it.

This week was a hot one for LoopMe’s video of the week. Our first choice was Reebok’s timely video for mother’s day, showing a woman slowly de-aging whilst doing fantastic feats with fantastic feet. You can watch that one here.

But, since we work in mobile video and advertising, the top spot has to go to Apple for their Onions based skit. Despite its overwhelmingly negative thumbs down reaction on YouTube (comments have been disabled), the hysteria surrounding a fundamentally trivial video event is a nice cheeky wink at a media industry constantly striving towards this ‘new’ concept or idea. A video shot by a 10 year old girl could definitely capture the hearts and imaginations of ad execs – what does the onion mean? Why is it being sliced? What does the loop add to the experience? Why is it looped that specific number of times? All questions you could instinctively ask – if you had the right / wrong instinctive behavior.

Watch the advert here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gHeBVyqJRo

The babies are back. Evian rocked the world last time they brought forth the CGI concoctions last time, so now they’ve returned, and in greater numbers.

Accompanied by a rather fantastic cover of the Beach Boys’ Kokomo (you can listen to that here), this high budget epic is the perfect back for kicking back, taking in the sun, and sipping on some smooth, premium, bottled water. The ad itself is, however, also a bit creepy – a world surrounded by sentient, cogent babies, owning property and running beverage stalls. Do babies have the economic savviness and logistical awareness necessary for working in retail? Who knows: we’ll let Lord of the Flies Part 2: Surf’s Up speak for itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWG3rtGoIlI

Runner up for this week: Ryan Reynolds continues his dominance of the world.

Published in MediaPost on 4/25/16 A quick search of Google Trends, and it’s clear interest in ad blocking has reached an all-time high. According to a study by Retale, 20% of adults are now using an ad blocker on their mobile device. The industry is facing a challenge when it comes to convincing the blockers to embrace advertising.

To resolve the issue, the industry need to understand why users are implementing ad blockers. The main reasons usually cited by the industry are normally data consumption, load times and battery use. These are all valid, but when looked at closely, they don’t seem to be the main cause of ad blocking. Research by Global Web Index found that only one third of users state page load times are the reason for using an ad blocker, while just three in ten said battery life was the motive for installing the software.

The real key to the problem lies in irrelevant advertising. Poorly targeted ads annoy users, do not generate high revenues for publishers and waste brands’ advertising budgets. While most advertising online today employs some level of targeting, it tends to focus around building audience profiles. This is, without a doubt, a hugely important part of targeting, but it neglects a huge amount of data.

Read the rest of the article on MediaPost here.