Hey look, nobody wants to watch pre-rolls

Because I have this big interest in monetising video, I always keep an eye open to see how people react to video advertising. I’ve therefore developed a little bit of an obsession to quiz all my friends on what they like / don’t when watching video online. And quite a lot of my friends aren’t that much into technology, so I find their feedback very valuable. Here’s what I’ve discovered in the past few months:

1. They don’t want to watch pre-rolls unless they’re directly related to the content of the video they’re about to watch. Therefore, targeting pays a very big role in video advertising I think.

2. If they have no choice, they would like a pre-roll they can interact / play with or that would be interesting / captivating. Did I hear interactive video, anyone? 🙂

3. They’d be much happier watching more, but shorter, video ads distributed across the video instead of having all of them at the beginning of the video. Why are advertisers still surprised that nobody clicks on pre-rolls? I’m pretty sure nobody pays attention to them, so they’re throwing their money out the window if you ask me.

4. Instead of a pre-roll, they’d like something to play with (a game, a poll, an animation). That would make them pay attention and actually remember what the pre-roll is about. Again, this is another sign that the world’s heading to words interactive video.

These are my conclusions after talking to quite a few people in the past few months. And please don’t get me wrong – by no means do I think that pre-rolls are going to die. They’re not. But they need to become smarter. More targeted. More interesting. Interactive :).