Limited spots remain:

Join us Dec. 1-3 in Nashville for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit

REGISTER

YouTube rolls out new unskippable six-second pre-roll ads

Think of them as like “little haikus of video ads.”

That’s how YouTube is spinning its forthcoming, unskippable pre-roll ad format in an announcement today. Called Bumpers, the ad units are six-second spots that appear in shorter videos on mobile devices where people tend to watch more “snackable,” or shorter, videos.

YouTube said in a blog post that Bumpers helped increased brand awareness and recall among its users. Bumpers won’t replace its traditional ad format, TrueView, which are longer ads that can be skipped after five seconds has passed. YouTube added that, perhaps not surprisingly, brands buy both formats since they work better together.

Bumpers will be bumping online sometime in May. Atlantic Records and Audi Germany, as seen below, are testing out the videos:

Atlantic Records decided to create different graphical (and cheap) ads for the release of Rudimental’s new album. Audi edited down a longer TrueView ad into serialized string of Bumper videos to promote its new Q-series SUV in Germany.

Even though YouTube is using a Japanese poem to describe the new format, at the end of the day it’s still a pre-roll ad.

More in Marketing

Future of Marketing Briefing: Creators had a big year. Christmas still went to the celebrities

Despite leaning on creators for most of the year, marketers aren’t doing it for the holiday crunch. That job still belongs to celebrities.

In graphic detail: Six thousand brands later, ChatGPT ads still have a conversion problem

OpenAI has ambitious ad revenue targets, which depend on advertiser demand, measurement and monetisation.

Agencies find AI overuse is leading to brief bloat

Agencies and marketers now frequently use AI tools to create media and creative briefs. But the practice could be a canary in the coalmine for AI overuse in advertising.