The 5 Second Future

You're going to want to read this... 

The first five seconds have never been as imperative as they are today. We live in a skippable world, where many online advertisements are becoming optional. YouTube's skip button counts down the seconds as the cursors of trigger happy consumers hover impatiently nearby. The worlds shortening attention spans are causing marketing teams to evolve around this social phenomena. Everyone's online experience is custom tailored to suit individual needs and interests. We live in a time where, if we want something bad enough, it will find us. Google finds the products we want before we even know that they exist.

We need to capture attention, entice the audience, and seduce potential customers into wanting to learn more. Ad creators have just seconds to convince their viewers that their ad is something they want to watch. When we click on a YouTube video, we expect instant access. The five-second countdown is a minor inconvenience between us and our chosen content. When we search for our favorite songs or artists or look up this week's Failblog compilation, the last thing we want to do is watch the ad.

If you're going to create an advertisement, it better be something people want to watch. That decision is made within the first, crucial, few seconds of a pitch. Users are on YouTube to be entertained, educated, or bemused by the endless sea of novel material. Advertisements need to add value to our lives and feel like time well spent. If your ad is good enough, from beginning to end, the people watching may even click to learn (or buy) more. 

Thankfully, Google Analytics is making it so that relevant advertisements find the appropriate audiences, limiting the number of times we feel the need to hit 'skip'. Some people may find it 'scary' that Google knows what we want, when we want it, and how much of it we want to see. It's the most convenient breach of privacy I have ever had the pleasure of accepting as a 'term of agreement.'

Nevertheless, if I am not entertained by the first 5 seconds of a Gillette Mach3 Turbo commercial, you can count on a perfectly timed "click".