Insights:I’ll be quick. 6-second bumper ads

For decades marketing professionals have been stressing that an ad should focus on a single thought. Something engaging and memorable that people will notice. Of course, this single-idea, best-practice approach often gets watered down during the process and soon we have ads that are trying to scream a million different benefits so as not to miss anything anyone may be looking for. Ultimately this leads to ads that miss the mark and end up saying nothing to the consumer.

When done right, a commercial focuses on a single thought. But it can still be a challenge to fit a compelling story within the constraints of a :30 or :60 second broadcast spot. Of course, that’s another of the old norms that the internet has cast asunder.

A fairly new format that is gaining a lot of traction are the bumper ads offered by Google Ads.

Bumper ads are six seconds long, non-skippable videos that usually play before a video someone actually wants to see.

Introduced around 2016, this extremely short marketing video approach may be the one format that people don’t need to be convinced should only focus on a single idea. It forces the creators and clients to truly breakdown the most important part of a brand story and then streamline it even more.

Bumper ads are all about capturing the viewer’s attention quickly and reflecting your brand’s essence. A large percentage of bumper ads are created using :30 or :15 second commercials and simply cherry picking the best six seconds of them. As time has gone by and bumper ads continue to provide value to brands, more and more videos are being produced that are concepted as six-second videos from the very beginning.

While you can’t say or show a lot, bumper ads can be a powerful addition to your overall marketing campaign and can help increase brand reach and recall. It’s also nice to have something that is non-skippable in our modern ad-blocking world.

Take a few seconds and click here to check out bumper ads we created for our client Center for Family Medicine. And, if you want a real challenge, take sometime to think what you would say about your brand in only six short seconds.