As we all know in the traditional advertising world, the 30 second spot is called the “short form” spot. But in the internet advertising world, 30 seconds is TOO LONG. The new 5 second ad is the new “short form” on the web.
Yes, 5 seconds. This is definitely the new micro-messaging trend, and those 15,30 and 60 second spots are simply too long when placed together with almost instant-on-content.
5 seconds is as much advertising as users will take without having an adverse reaction to the sponsored message.
But why is this ?
Because in this era of attention span deficit, you want to get to your ‘relevant’ content as soon as possible, you are constantly being bombarded with a lot of messages, most of them totally ‘irrelevant’ to the kind of content you are looking for, for example, you go to a website to find ‘relevant’ content you are very interested in and suddenly a very LONG and NON RELEVANT 30 second spot stands between you and your content. This is definitely annoying, you end up watching the first 2 or 3 seconds and you close the ad or hit the back button. This is totally ineffective advertising.
This also why services like micro blogging on Twitter or on its micro video blogging counterpart Seesmic are gaining a lot of traction, even in these days of political season, the political reporters are using Twitter to report from the campaign trail. We are tired of long messages.
And don’t be surprised that as we move advertising and content delivery on mobile devices even 5 seconds will seem too long.
Advertisers are simply moving the 30 second TV spots into the web, and this is unacceptable.
So as digital marketers, we have to be creative in providing ’short and relevant’ advertising messages that accomplish a total or partial delivery of our marketing messages.
