Content Marketing at Its Finest — Using YouTube Pre-Roll to Your Advantage

You have just spent five minutes searching YouTube to find what seems like a credible video on how to tie a bow tie. With black satin positioned perfectly in each hand, you are ready to get started. Well, almost ready. First you have to endure a YouTube pre-roll ad. You know, the five seconds of life you waste anxiously awaiting the black ticker in the bottom right hand corner to say “skip ad.”

According to market research, 94% of YouTube viewers skip the ad after five seconds. What does that do for the advertiser? Not much. Five seconds to convey a brand or product message will make every CMO sweat doubt and challenge the effectiveness of advertising with YouTube. Wipe your forehead CMOs; the golden ticket to YouTube success has content marketing written all over it.

Nail Communications, a firm based in Providence, Rhode Island, set out to make five seconds of YouTube pre-roll full of relevant content glory. The clearly low-budget ad starts out by asking users to not skip the full ad. If the viewers did, they could potentially electrocute a puppy. Yes, a soft, yellow, eight-week-old puppy. The content shock value in just five seconds has kept 26% of ad viewers watching the entire 90-second spot. The true intention of the spot? To raise money for the ASPCA and to prove that with content marketing, relevancy reigns supreme.