How can you entice viewers right away, forcing them not to skip? Here are 4 tips to ensure your YouTube TrueView ads are unskippable, with examples of great ads you won’t be able to stop watching.

#1: Get Your Viewers Involved

Ads are easy to skip because most of them are unremarkable, and don’t actually grab the attention of the viewer. If you start to approach your ad as a two-sided interaction then you might have a chance of keeping your viewers engaged.

Check out this Skittles ad for example:

Even though this was not a TrueView ad, it likely could have been because the ad gets the viewer involved immediately. It captures your direct attention by asking you to actually interact with the ad.

Remember the people who will be watching your ads when you write your script. How can you make them feel like part of the video?

#2: Acknowledge the Skip Button

There’s a reason viewers love the skip button. It’s because they don’t want to watch your ad.

Rather they want to watch the movie trailer or cat video that everyone in the office is laughing about.

With this in mind, it can work wonders to acknowledge this fact. Check out this ad by Nail Communications for example:

The puppy wouldn’t actually be electrocuted if you pressed skip, but it did keep you watching, didn’t it? This ad also incorporates point #1, by speaking directly to the viewer.

#3: Use Humor

Google conducted a study in 2015 looking at thousands of YouTube TrueView ads across several verticals and countries and found that humor is the clear indicator that keeps people watching. “Across the board – whether we were looking for a lift in brand metrics or how long the viewer watched – humor took the cake,” says the YouTube Insights Team.

Dollar Shave Club is known for this. Their ads are almost like SNL skits, and don’t take much time to make people laugh about ridiculous day-to-day scenarios:

What I love most about these ads is that they tie directly to their product, and give the viewer a reason to buy (or at least learn more).

#4: Get Emotional

Year after year we see the majority of the top Super Bowl ads are heart-string-pulling, tear-jerking commercials. It’s clear to most advertisers that sparking an emotional reaction will not only engage your audience, but it will make your brand memorable to them.

But how can you do this in a short advertisement? I’d recommend telling a human story of love or loss with real humans and classic music. Take the Extra gum ad below (one of my all-time favorites) that actually caused me to cry at my desk the first time I saw it:

Of course, this is an ad for gum, but remember that even B2B audiences respond to emotion!

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