Pre Roll Ads: The Secret Sauce to Engaging Video Content

1. What are Pre-Roll Ads?
2. Pros and Cons of Pre-Roll Ads
3. Are Pre-Roll Ads Effective?
4. Animation for Pre-Roll Ads

What are Pre-Roll Ads?

A pre-roll ad is a video ad on YouTube playing immediately before a video on both mobile and desktop. 

They are very brief, typically anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds long. 

Usually, they’re a preview of the “full” commercial ad, if the viewer chooses to click on it. Else, they can be self-contained and very short. 

Pros and Cons of Pre-Roll Ads

Pre-roll ads have the benefit of capturing your viewers’ attention since they play before the content that the viewer has clicked on.

For example, an educational YouTube channel focusing on mathematics can create a pre-roll ad that targets people who are looking for help with a particular equation.

This type of pre-roll ad allows the educational YouTube channel to reach their target audience more effectively, whilst monetizing their content in the process.

The downside is that you must be careful to make them engaging, interesting, and not too long lest they get irritating to the viewer. This is one key reason why they’re so short in length.

Are Pre-Roll Ads Effective?

The stats don’t lie, pre-roll ads work pretty well. 

A 2017 study by IPG Media Lab and YuMe found that pre-roll video ads are effective across several metrics including brand awareness, brand engagement, brand favorability, and purchase intent.

The study also found that viewers were three and a half times less likely to consider pre-roll ads to be interruptive or intrusive, compared to out-stream or mid-roll formats.

They also found them to be more informative and engaging. 

You might be worried about the fact that your viewers can quite often skip pre-roll ads, making them less effective. But as it turns out, this is not the case.

A study by Facebook found that even one second of exposure to a pre-roll ad led to increased brand awareness and ad recall! 

Also, Check out our blog on Tips to Grow a Youtube Channel.

Animation for Pre-Roll Ads

An animation is a perfect tool for your pre-roll ads. It’s already used in everything from movies and TV to other forms of advertising, and it’s easy to see why.

Animation brings a level of power to your message that speaks for itself. With animation, you’re limited only by your imagination more than anything else. It’s cost-effective and infinitely flexible. 

With tricks like animated text and stylized graphics, the sky’s the limit with what you can depict in just a few seconds. 

Best of all, the power of animation is that it’s attention-grabbing and highly memorable, offering unbeatable brand recall. You can also try animation for bumper ads.

So it’s only natural that people everywhere are using animation in pre-roll ads as well. You’re really not limited by anything so long as you can visualize it in your mind. 

Partner with an animation team today and find out what’s possible for any message on any budget. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you find!