The Real Reason People Skip Ads

And What We Can Do To Change It

We’re working on some cyberweek ads for a client, and you know the only thing missing? The actual offer. Yep, what some might argue is the most important part of an ad, we deliberately left out. Will it succeed?

We’re betting on it.?

But our decision wasn’t based on being deliberately contrarian, then exposing this bit of ad heresy on LinkedIn. The choice is based on what is best for our client, and an audience of young gamers who have had a lifetime of practice on what they allow in, and what they block out.

The Offer Myth

In many instances, the offer is not what motivates people, at least outside of Black Friday, or Prime Days. But when that happens, it is generally because they have a predisposition to your brand. They've bought it before, want to buy it, and are just waiting for that perfect deal to buy it again. But what about people who don't know your brand? What motivates them is how your ad makes them feel. Yet, our belief system in prospecting it to lead with the offer, attribute or new product, thinking it will sell itself.

But does it?

Let’s zoom out a bit. There are studies that say the average person sees between 4,000-10,000 ads a day. Seems almost unbelievable, right? So why is that? Well, because most of those ads we have tuned out. They don’t break through, because we are engaging their rational brains. With that, ads are met in real time much like we retain memories.

Think about your childhood home, or your first car. Can you see every aspect of it? The bookshelves, your closet, the Van Hagar cassettes on the seat? Probably not, but you have a general “feel” of the environment in broader strokes, because that is how our brain retains collected memories. Maybe it is a color, or a snippet of a birthday cake. And that subconscious approach is how consumers consciously approach ads these days.?Retaining only things that connect in a more visceral and human way.

Things that stick.

Yet, by engaging with the rational brain, we are already hurting our chances of breakthrough. A study was done, explained in one of my favorite books, Made To Stick, where one group was given an analytical exercise, and another a creative, emotionally-driven exercise. Then, they asked the participants to give money to a charity. Those who were given the creative exercise were much more likely to donate. And that is because the emotional setup is much more successful than that rational. Once we put on our analytics hat, we react differently because we are not primed. Yet, for many, formulaic running footage and 1.9% financing for select buyers is still the go to approach. In effect, we make it easy for people to tune the ad out.

Information Overload

Growing up in the 80's, we used to take bathroom breaks, or grab a Tab from the fridge during those commercials that played between Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. There were less billboards, no digital ads, no social ads. It just wasn’t as common. Today, we, along with the generation that grew up on ads have grown weary. Yet, with going from 500 ads a day in the 80’s to 10,000 today, I've noticed the approach to ads hasn’t really changed. In fact, it has gotten worse.?

Today, the conventional wisdom is to show it all in the first few seconds, because people won’t watch the rest. I sat in so many meetings with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit where they would say, show the logo in the first few seconds. I always challenged that approach. How about, instead of hacking the system in the first few seconds, only to serve your platform's brand awareness metrics, we just make something good enough for people to watch??

Seriously, Imagine if other things were like that. Movies, music, etc. We’d know Bruce Willis was actually dead in the first 10 seconds. We’d know Kevin Spacey was Keyser S?ze before we reached for the popcorn. And sadly, what happens in Fight Club would be revealed before the first tooth fell out. True, it is a different narrative structure, but it is something we can learn from.

We know people will put ass on couch, and binge a season of Barry with no problem. But when it comes to a 15 second ad, they bail. That's mostly because we don't prime them emotionally. When we constantly invert the pyramid, we force them to make immediate rational choices. At that point, people don't have a reason to stay engaged. Yes, people’s attention spans are short, but for the right material, the right message, they will stay.?

Isn’t it odd to think we, as an industry, produce something so off-putting to our audience that we need to front-load the message? What have we done to remedy that? Certainly not to change the way we do it, or to make ads less practical, more emotional, engaging, or ultimately make people “feel” something. Our solution is to move the goal posts, frontload a message, with the foregone conclusion that they will peace out quickly.

Make Better Ads

The ultimate arbiter of a good ad is to make people feel. To make people laugh, think, smile, go “ahhhh,” or feel choked up. How can a $2.99 jumbo jack make that happen? It can't. Yet, we persist, and follow the brief leading with the attribute or offer on prospecting, where customers may not know us at all. But it is not the creative's fault, it is the system's fault. Up and down the chain, we use the past to guide the future, with old methods that produce mediocre results.

Now, if you saw 10,000 ads yesterday, how many do you remember? How many made you feel something? Personally, I’ve got nothing for either. I imagine many people have the same. So, most of the messages we are seeing do not break through. And instead of asking ourselves why, we simply move the message up, hoping that they will watch for at least 3 seconds to know we have something to say, even though they don't know what.

And that is because we get caught up in what we want to say, rather than what people are willing and able to hear. Our briefs lead with that, without the context of how many people are saying the exact same thing.

How many times can people hear "we are cheaper, better, or more exclusive?" James Carville famously said, “If you say 3 things, you say nothing.” So, what does that mean if those things are being said 10,000 times a day??

Break The Loop

So, how do we break through? It’s not easy. But it is. To do so means unlearning all the things we have done in the past. Removing the layers of people who merely tell us what to say, and instead, summon a smaller, more articulate approach of what people are willing to hear in between CNN articles. Breaking through must be in a way that fits into people’s lives rather than intrudes upon it. And that is the key to making a good ad. To not fall victim to the same best practices that give us terrible click rates and, basic, banal messaging.?

Let’s do the math for a second. The average click through rate for a display ad is .46%. Say, we have a truly successful ad that gets .70% and we laud it to the client. Draw figurative happy faces around it when we present the monthly analytics. This one performed above industry average we say, but if we take a second to think about it, it’s not really great. So, success in this case is having 70 people click on that ad, if it was served to 10,000 people. It’s hard to find another industry where the bar of success is so low.

Maybe Politics?

So, we change the approach to success, throw up our arms and say, "That’s just the way it is." The platforms spin metrics and tell us that, and we, in turn, spin the same shit to the clients. And we all get caught in this world of mediocrity. We use baby steps with AI, mechanics, math and targeting to get incrementally better results, rather than simply overhauling our approach to it.

So where does that leave us? Maybe we should be brave and think about things differently. But that requires buy-in from the everyone on the team and the client. Try priming our audience, and use that first beat to connect emotionally, not rationally. Stop frontloading with nonsense that no one retains. And, if that happens, your prospecting ads will work better. You just need to present something that makes people feel and remember. From there, you can up the ante a bit on your offerings, but the best out-of-the-gate approach is one that many are unwilling to take.