Pre-roll ads, those ads you see just before you view an online video, seem to be effective if you believe a recent article in Advertising Age. So it will be a very long time before we see them go away. It’s not surprising that this tactic works. Unlike banner-ads, pre-rolls are impossible to ignore - or skip. Because of this, the chances of the ad in making an impression on the user are greater. That’s not rocket science - you don’t need to be a marketer to figure that one out. However, they do enrage many users. While I don’t have any scientific data to back this up - but I would imagine that the anger probably doesn’t help motivate users to absorb advertising messages. I would dare to say that they might even instil a negative sentiment in users just prior to the ad. And if you ask me, that’s not ideal.

A snippet from my life

One day, as I was sitting at a company meeting, they handed us these little remote controls with buttons labeled one through 9 (it could of been A through I, but that’s besides the point). After the speaker finished his presentation, he quizzed the audience to see if the main points of his presentation were absorbed. “Neat”, I thought. That was pretty much it for my thinking that day, honestly. But the story gets better, swear.

A few days later, I was online trying to view a highlight video from TSN.ca about the Habs game from the night before. I was not surprised to see a pre-roll about some brand that lasted 30 seconds. I didn’t pay attention to it at all. I actually just stared at the remaining time tick down from 30, to 29… down to 0. I thought to myself, “Man, if only there was a way to skip through this”. I then got over my frustration and carried on.

A few minutes later, after I got my Habs fill, I left the TSN site. At that moment,  a friend walked by. He, too, was a Habs fan and I wanted to show him the video I just viewed. I called him over and I returned to TSN.ca and was AGAIN presented with the pre-roll. I was instantly annoyed. I thought to myself, “Hello? I just saw this - why are you showing this to me again. Yes, I KNOW. Samsung. I got it. Thank you…. 10 seconds to go? *insert swear words here*”.

Enter: lightbulb, stage right.

Why pre-roll?

I thought (I do a lot of thinking as you can probably tell), what are the points of these pre-roll ads? Obviously:

• To expose me to a brand…


• To call me to action…


• To place a product at the top of my mind…


• Ensure I got the message, etc.

All marketers want to do is have users recognize the brand they are pushing and hopefully a message as well - but let’s not get carried away here. Wouldn’t it be great if marketers could actually tell that the user either recognized the brand  advertised or remembered the commercial? Wouldn’t it be great for users if they could skip the pre-roll?

A possible solution: The quiz-skip (I’m working on a better name…)

Here’s my (half-baked) idea. While the pre-roll is playing, have an overlay appear asking the user a simple question, “What brand is being advertised in this video?” (or something along those lines). If the user remembers and types the correct answer in, he benefits from skipping the video and the advertiser benefits from having a meaningful metric that a user acknowledged their brand. If the wrong answer is entered, a hint could be displayed, or different video, etc. Apart from getting information about brand recognition, other meaningful metrics could be collected as well:

• Misspellings - this would tell the marketer that perhaps work must be done in emphasizing a product name.


• Incorrect answers - this could indicate to the marketer that the ad is too similar to a competitor’s

The possibilities, while not endless, are plentiful.

What are your thoughts on pre-rolls? Is there any benefit to the quiz-skip?