By now you might have heard of Adblock, one of those browser extensions with the stop sign icon that stops those “pesky” ads appearing in front of your favorite videos and on your favorite websites. Less and less people, however, are using these blocking extensions due to better marketing.
The rates of users adding advertisement blocking extensions to their browsers hit its peak 3 years ago, and the declining numbers are mostly due in part to the Coalition for Better Ads. This coalition began with representatives from Google, Facebook, Unilever, as well as 32 other members as an initiative to support Internet advertising while making ads less intrusive for consumers. Their work has led to significant adaptations in media marketing; many advertisements on Youtube now have the “skip” feature after 5 seconds, or are otherwise less than 20 seconds.
Coming August 5th 2020, Google Chrome is rolling out new standards for advertisements featured in “short form” video content. Any video less than 8 minutes long qualifies as “short form.” Chrome will stop showing ads on sites that “repeatedly show these disruptive ads,” effective globally.
Advertisements considered “disruptive” for short form videos are categorized as the following:
- Mid-roll ads of any duration.
- Pre-roll ads or ads longer than 31 seconds which cannot be skipped in the first 5 seconds.
- Text or display ads that appear in the middle third of a playing video or are larger than 20% of the video content.
The new Chrome standards for the pre-roll advertisements seem to be aligned with Youtube’s TrueViews ads, which allow users to skip after the first five seconds. Bumper ads, which are unskippable but only 6-seconds long, won’t be affected either. There may be some changes to the appearance of display banners on YouTube videos, but otherwise, mid roll ads and mid-third ads seem to be the only categories of video advertisement which will be hit heavily by these new standards.
“It’s important to note that YouTube.com, like other websites with video content, will be reviewed for compliance with the Standards,” the company said in its announcement Wednesday. “Similar to the previous Better Ads Standards, we’ll update our product plans across our ad platforms, including YouTube, as a result of this standard, and leverage the research as a tool to help guide product development in the future.”
Chrome began these advertisement blocking and filtering efforts in 2018 with desktop and mobile display ads. That first iteration of Better Ad Standards included auto-play video ads with sound enabled on desktop. The initiative, founded by Google, Facebook and the IAB, is aimed at curbing the acceleration of ad blocking, and it certainly helped, given the current lower rates. Publishers and video platforms have four months to adapt to the standards or risk losing many of their ads on Chrome. Advertisers should evaluate their media buys to estimate possible effects on their post-August campaigns.
So what does that mean for marketers?
Chrome is one of the most popular social media browsers, given the strength of Google’s brand and the range of its customization. Marketers will now have to compete for fewer ad slots in Youtube videos. In the upcoming months, if your video advertisements are featured on short-form video content, do an audit of their success Adaptation could range from keeping advertisements as they are (and expecting a drop), moving them to a different platform, or a complete change of medium.
With Pearl Marketing’s help, you can transform your video marketing! Animated video is an engaging instrument that helps tell your story in an innovative way. It gives you the ability to bring any concept to life, no matter how complex.
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