Marketing Pains #3: Skippability — the democratization of attention
What happens when media becomes interactive and skippable? Messages and stories get compressed and sweetened. To deliver a punchline or a completed idea, everything shrinks when the audience’s attention becomes more fickle.
[Part of the series: Marketing Pains ]
When we were kids we dreamed of being able to fast-forward a live TV stream. It’s obviously impossible, yet this is essentially what digital feeds and on-demand video do. What we never dreamed, was how this would change the viewing material.
Content in fast-paced skippable environments lives and dies by how effectively it can hook and hold audiences. This skews it to certain subjects and more obvious storytelling. It’s a beauty contest.
Interruption is central to advertising. It seems logical that people would opt out if they were given a way to, and they have.
Just about anything can now be skipped, even a billboard:
In a short span of time, ads have gone from having captive and somewhat willing audiences to being largely avoidable and the audience has become hostile. Social feeds are designed to skip over anything that doesn’t interest us. Fast-forwarding over TV ads was empowering, but simply watching ad-free content like Netflix is even easier. Phones allow people to opt out of just about anything, by simply withdrawing to their own screen and choice of content.
More powerful than any of the utility that ad avoiding technology has unleashed is the very idea that ads should be discretionary. It’s a Pandora’s box that leaves audiences feeling entitled to their time — all of it. Why should I watch ads at all?
Advertisers feeling entitled to reach audiences whose attention they have paid for, often fail to recognize that the audience pays too. They pay for your ad with their attention, basically their time. Why should they offer this most precious resource in an increasingly busy world?
When YouTube popularized the skippable video pre-roll, they created a new standard for the on-demand world. If the ad interests me, I watch it. If it doesn’t, I skip it. Everyone wins (especially the audience). YouTube’s ‘forced view’ format has never worked nearly as well. Why force an ad on a potentially unwilling or irrelevant audience? In light of the skippable option, doesn’t a forced ad run the risk of creating resentment? These are the questions that skippable ad formats pose for marketers and audiences alike — and the thinking extends to all ad formats, like TV spots.
Social feeds have further entrenched the skippable mindset. Their ads and entire experiences are skippable. You simply scroll on if anything doesn’t interest you. This reinforces audiences’ growing expectation that anything unpalatable doesn’t have to be tolerated.
The shift from a liner programmed world to an on-demand skippable one has altered the core mechanics of advertising. The challenge for advertisers used to be fitting the necessary information into the allotted format. Now it’s audience retention. There is no allotted time. Where there were attention portions to work with before, there is now only incremental attention. Every second of the audience’s attention must be earned.
This has created a form of gravity that advertisers have to overcome. You get the first split second of attention, then you have to earn the next and the next and the next… Anything that isn’t sticky and engaging right out of the gate tends to fall flat instantly. Clickbait exists to exploit this superficiality. Along the way, any moments where the story isn’t very engaging trigger viewers to drop off sharply too, so content must be engaging throughout.
The mild manners of brands with interruptive messages have become too easy to wave away both technically and in principle. Simply identifying as an ad makes something highly skippable.
Skipping is a fairly Darwinian feedback mechanism. It cuts short undesirable things and leaves winners with more space to shine. The democracy of attention has driven real change in what stories get told and which ones rise to the top; what counts as news; what entertainment looks like and what shapes culture.
The types of messages and formats that advertisers traditionally rely on have been relegated. Would people rather watch a funny cat, a prank or some breaking controversy than your ad? You bet. These promise instant gratification and real reward.
In an environment where all attention is essentially earned, brands’ stories easily pale in comparison with more seductive topics that compliment abrupt delivery formats. As you thumb through the latest trending scandal, ads almost become invisible.
Without the protection of structured ad units — brands struggle to compete for attention out in the open. In the attention democracy, brands get far less air time.
Read more of the Marketing Pains series:
- What’s really causing these — Marketing Pains?
- #1: Transparency — the magic killer
- #2: Fragmentation — the shrinking of attention spans
- #3: Skippability — the democratization of attention
- #4: Sharing — the gearing of collective attention
