Slashdot Mirror
Millennials Only Have a 5 To 6 Second Attention Span For Ads (cnbc.com)
Reader schwit1 writes: If you're an advertiser who wants to market a product to millennials, you're going to have to make it quick. A new study by comScore revealed online ads targeted toward millennials have to be around 5 to 6 seconds to be effective, a sharp contrast from the traditional 30-second commercial seen on TV. "The length of time of an episode or a viewing period is really important and has got to be short, otherwise you just won't keep the attention of millennials," comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni told CNBC's "Squawk Alley." The format of advertising may have to be radically changed to reach millennials, he suggested. "You're going to have to make your case literally in a matter of seconds and make sure you grab somebody's attention, Fulgoni said.
T&A
As far as I'm concerned, you get 15 seconds. If your ads aren't over in 15 seconds and my video hasn't started yet, I'm clicking away.
..is around 5 to 6 seconds. At least, mine is.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Fuck ads. Fuck people who make boring, standard advertising. You are worth none of my time.
I hear so much of this: millennials this, millennials that, can poor millennials ever catch a break? They have inherited a shitty economy, a weird climate, a never ending war on so called 'terrorism'. They are under impression that all that can really help them is more collectivist action because they got convinced that free market capitalism is all that is wrong with the world though they rarely actually experienced free market anything.
Millennials only have 5 to 6 second attention span for ads... guess what, I am definitely not a millennial and I have even less of an attention span for ads, I don't watch them at all, I turned them all off and if I see one here or there I learned to pay exactly 0 attention to them, skipping them and never remembering them (and never really even knowing what the hell they were about).
The only ads I care about is for products that I am specifically looking for, then I pay attention to what is advertised when I research a product. This has nothing to do with being a millennial, it has to do with living in a modern advertisement saturated world.
You can't handle the truth.
Or is the 6 seconds the ad detection time then the ad filters kick in and attention moves elsewhere. If I am looking for cat videos or other amusements, I will abort a page if it shows me a video. Not wasting my time wasting watching ads.
It's not a matter of attention span but the time it takes to remind yourself "I wouldn't have time for this and I'm broke anyway."
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I can't even stand the 5 seconds youtube makes you watch an ad before you can skip it. There's a reason adblockers are so popular, and it isn't only Millenials.
5 to 6 seconds for ads?
WTF is wrong with them?
No. Ads get maybe half a second while I'm finding the blocking script that they made it past.
More than me, and I'm a lot older than that. Time to stop trying to millennials in a a bucket. People are people and millennials are not a special case.
I literally don't care about your ads. I'll mute them the second they come on. And if I remember an ad, I go out of my way to NOT purchase their product.
"Hmm, I heard big mac today. I'm craving a big mac. Guess I'm not going."
Millennials have a 6 second attention span for anything. Including writi
What does "a 5 to 6 second online ad" mean? Heaven help us, have they started doing video advertising online? That's a really bad idea.
I have a 0 second attention span for ads, because advertisement sucks and is a waste of time and space. The brands I remember being shoved in my face? I go out of my way to pay more for something else because FUCK advertisers.
Could have just left off "For Ads"...
Just saying...
The time it takes to reach for the remote. On the computer, 0.5s to skip the few that get through the stack of ad blockers.
So, Blipverts are the future? This explains why Youtube is killing the 30-second ad in favor of shorter ads, though.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
10 second ads at most.
Don't waste people's time,
Don't waste people's bandwidth on their non-unlimited wireless plans,
Don't be In my Face.
Don't sell me a lifestyle.
Do not Yell.
Do not be that annoying commercial that repeats it's self every 2 seconds with the same phrase.
Tell me what you are, what you do. and how it benefits me.
The end.
Is it possible that in that 5 seconds, they are actually hopping on some less biased review site, determining the product is crap and moving on. Surely there's gotta be some point where advertising just works less.
5 or 6 seconds for an ad is way more attention than I give them. I guess it will take a while before they learn to become "ad blind."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
For us Gen X'ers, in the old days before Streaming video and DVR's, we were forced to watch 30 second commercials.
...except for VCR's, but those could be as annoying to use as commercials were to watch and early on, were really expensive.
There was no alternative.
I don't think it's that we had a long attention span. I didn't. It's that we had no choice what so ever. It wasn't the length of the ad, it was how many you'd have to ignore at a time.
We coped though. I always amazed myself with how much homework I could do three to four minutes at a time.
It's not a 6 second attention span for ads before they get bored and move on, it's a 6 second tolerance of ads before the annoyance is worth the effort of avoiding the ad.
But they already know that, which is why they play games with making the ads harder to avoid or skip instead of making short and clever attention-getting spots. They want to burn that brand into your head before you can press or click anything.
Its why we have fights over commercial-skipping DVRs, why we have banners across the bottom of the screen, and why we have product placement.
I seldom see ads and I don't watch TV. I'm also not a millennial - a baby boomer actually. So if they are really watching ads for 5 seconds, then they still have a lot to learn about adblockers. Bah, kids these days. Now get off my lawn.
Can't be too far off now.
Not having the patience for ads is not the same as having a short attention span. Maybe millennials are just a little more savvy than former generations and realize that all marketing is toxic horseshit.
This story actually makes me optimistic for future generations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
oh, yeah... right here on this very site.
me? much older than "millennials".. i've been bombarded with an ever increasing amount of marketing bullshit for decades. i don't even have the patience for six seconds of adverts anymore.
It sounds like they took data from click based advertisements and figured out the demographic from cookies or other identification... and they probably are using click-through rates as signs of interest.
So, demographics that are susceptible to advertisement might watch the ad and click at 20 seconds. But Millennials might not actually be susceptible to the ads. If they or anyone else clicks it in the first 6 seconds, it's probably because they made a mistake, not that they are interested in the product. The 6-second "attention span" is probably more of an identification time to recognize an advertisement so they can proceed to ignore it. And Millennials are very good at not clicking it after identifying it.
I'm not a millennial, I do buy things online, and STOP SHOVING SHIT IN MY FACE and then maybe you can get some of my money.
Another reason it was so easy for Trump to win. He kept his tweets short and sweet. He's a man of our times!
I'm Gen-X. I also have a very short span and impatient for many things like ads.
Also, this /. story is missing a link to the story. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Blipverts
I may be a 90s kid, but I remember seeing maybe 1-3 minutes of ads per 12 minutes on tv and that was it. And of course the ads you'd see on paper or walls, etc. But now there's 38472847 ads per website or video online! I mean come on the amount of ads is so oversaturating that I can't stand but ignore or block them. Relevant ads my foot, they just chuck ads at our face, track us, and sometimes feed us malware. Nope. They get 0 of my attention unless it Really is a good ad and I'm genuinely interested. Any ad now just annoys me because they're all stalking me across the internet or popping up all over the dang place. So ublock origin saves the day for me
I'm quite a bit older than millennials, and I sure don't have a 5-6 second attention span for ads. The reason I became a cord cutter was all the obnoxious ads exploding across the bottom on the screen for 5-6 seconds. If that's what they're going to do, I don't care to view their content for free much less pay for it.
This particular member of their parent generation has a 0 second attention span for ads.
uBlock Origins, baby.
Fuck ads.
they'll just let their attention be wasted! We're doomed as a people.
... There is a difference between 'having no attention span' and 'being able to see bullshit for what it is and tune it out'
The only people paying attention to ads these days are the advertisers. I'm ancient by millenial standards, and 5-6 seconds is how long it takes me to find the skip/kill/mute button.
NT
Mine is far less than that for ads. In fact, my attention is almost immediately lost as I hunt through AdBlock settings to figure out how the ad got past my ad blocker.
If you are advertising, chances are whatever you are offering isn't much of a deal. You're bigger and louder than your competition? Chances are you are offering an inferior product for a superior price. Which brings us to the second problem with advertising: the stupid scams you people pull just to put a little jingle in your pocket. You want to know why people block everything these days? Well, you already know the reason: it's you, or if it isn't you, it's ten of your friends. Come on, you know that you use SEO to pump up your Google stats; it's what everyone does, and it's not hurting anyone, right? Well, there's your answer.
But what about giant epileptic shock-inducing blinking banner ads, they would certainly get customers, right? Try to imagine someone, on a ladder, in the middle of a parking lot, with a bullhorn or voice amplifier set to 11; you're pissing off millions of people to get hundreds of 'customers.'
Flash ads? Well, you know how everyone is rocking the latest i7 or Ryzen-1800X? They aren't. Let me put it to you this way: if you and your choice of a partner are nearing the end of the 1st round of mutually pleasuring each other, are right on the rails of an orgasm, and some creepy guy in suit and glasses suddenly rolled out from underneath the bed that, up until a nanosecond ago, you were making passionate love on, and started asking you if you thought about switching home insurance providers, would that not kill the moment, right there and then? And assuming you somehow didn't die of a heart attack or brain aneurysm (at this 'advertisement'), would you really be interested, ever, in discussing home insurance providers, with anyone?
"If you're an advertiser who wants to market a product to millennials, you're going to have to make it quick. A new study by comScore revealed online ads targeted toward millennials have to b
*evil Willow voice* Bored now!
Aren't most millennials either dead or in retirement homes at this point? Hip brands are all about gen-z and Alpha now. Alphas also wear gray and work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever
You're going to have to make your case literally in a matter of seconds and make sure you grab somebody's attention
Negative attention perhaps. I consider every video ad I see a potential attack to my system, both the computer and the brain. Ad targeting is also failing horribly. Even Google can't get it right as it misses the subject matter context of the adds and extends their generic targeting outside of a particular service or web site.
T&A
That's called multi-tasking, the focus shifts every 5-6 seconds from Tits to Ass then back again.
In the ad, a voice says ,"You can have younger skin. Buy (product name) lotion, and apply it twice daily for a month."
The background image is two pictures, which show a face before and after using the lotion for a month.
I care so little about ads I tune them out within a few seconds. and then I remember to activate adblock.
None of them have jobs, or money to buy anything. Wait a few years until their baby-boomer parents die and leave them a little money. Then they'll start paying attention to ads.
Are they basing it on his long people are watching ads? Because I'm not watching ads, I'm tired of their shit interrupting my internet. Especially on Facebook, as soon as it shows ad loading I don't continue watching. If it is some shit website that covers the screen in ads or auto plays video, that website doesn't need anymore traffic from me. Then everyone whines because I use ad block, but I don't want to see you obnoxious I your face ads.
The 5-6 seconds is not their attention span, it's the time needed to reach for the remote.
Web browsing is completely different, we don't have to take that nonsense anymore and we dont. And the younger generation which has not grown used to advertiser abuse tolerate it even less.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Who gets advertising? I've used adblock for years, no fishing email or adspam.
Usually my attention span for ads is less than 1 second. Way to go millenials!
We'll make great pets
I figure its not so much attention span as a measure of the average time to skip the ad. You'd would think they would have better reflexes, I'm guessing its a lack of proper computer administration training education in our schools, they just don't know how to maintain proper ad blocking software, nor to roll their own.
Your company is not entitled to my time, bandwidth, nor attention.
On browsers: uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger.
On my home network: pfSense firewall sits between Comcast and everything else. pfBlockerng + DNSBL
They are configured with multiple host list sources, it's the best thing I've ever done for adblocking. It stops all the shit from getting on my SmartTV which is locked down and auto-updates but it doesn't fucking play ads in the youtube app or anywhere else but TV from the antenna.
Probably more likely to just block the ads altogether. I personally don't mind static ads that just take up space. But I have noticed a ever increasing amount of active ads that really slow down page loading and are just plain annoying.
I can appreciate that adds help support the online content I enjoy.
However, I am rarely if ever persuaded by an add to purchase a product. Almost all adds I'm exposed to are irrelevant to me.
I'm the type of customer who will research a product and seek out articles and reviews from trusted sources before purchasing, not because I found an add entertaining.
The exception is the product category I didn't even know existed. In that case, again I will explore possible competition and options before making a decision. An add for company A might lead me to purchase from company B.
This has been true even when I was a kid, back when I still watched TV.
Is 0.0 Seconds. I have FULLY ignored all advertising pointed at me, since I was about 12 years old... 27 years ago. Ads only work on the simple minded... Heavily Advertising to someone like me, especially on youtube, is basically a GUARANTEE that I "WON'T" Buy your products or services. You might even end up blacklisted in my household. Like Grammarly and WIX. The 2 most annoying advertisers on youtube. I would NEVER do business with either company. Due 100% to their overly aggressive marketing campaigns forcing me to hit mute 100+x a day as I watch videos online. I run EVERY ad blocker known to man, and I will CONTINUE to fully ignore any and all advertising, until the day I die! My ability to care for what you people are selling, is nonexistent. You have Forced me to suppress that ability with your overuse of "Advertising", as It eventually causes the total suppression of attention span for bullshit...
I'm quite a bit older than millennials, and I sure don't have a 5-6 second attention span for ads.
Same. I'm in my 40s and cannot tolerate video ads. If I watch some interesting video on Facebook that fades in an ad I'll scroll down right away. If I watch something that I've DVR'd I'll mash the FF button through ads. If I'm on a web page that starts playing a video ad I'll immediately close the page. If I'm watching a YouTube video I'll immediate click the Skip Ad button once it becomes available. (I've noticed some new ads last only the amount of time the button isn't available.) I don't go to gas stations that play ads from the petrol pump. This isn't a generational thing - this is a 'these ads are fucking annoying' thing.
Millennials also have a 5 to 6 second attention span when remembering to included the article source in their Slashdot submissions, too.
P.S. "Reader schwit1 writes..." ... is obviously the new way of expressing "copy and paste".
I was born in the fifties of last century and I have none whatsoever.
Apparently, ad tolerance increases as you get younger. As an old fart, my attention span for ads is about 12 milliseconds. It they have T&A, then 14 milliseconds.
god this is fucking *boring* even if you skim read it.
You see decent ads? Bullshit. NAME ONE.
With a headline that long, you lost most of the millennials at "5".
Just go to
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt
for the latest version of the malware/advert blocking hosts file. It gets updated about every 5 or 6 weeks. FREEWARE!
Superbowl commercials are going to be a lot cheaper if you're only doing 5-6 second time slots.
Assuming anyone will continue watching it that is.
Why would anyone even bother paying attention to an ad? Even if it was a product I was potentially interested in, their point of view is completely biased. No sales person or ad ever tells you the drawbacks to a product (unless legislated to such as drug side effects), their goal is to tell you good things. I know this. You know this. Pretty much everyone knows this. So why would I consider their opinion as a serious factor in my purchasing decision. The maker of widget XYZ says its great, oh.. you don't say?!?
Second, advertisements don't drive my purchases. Budgeting, need, and benefit evaluation does. My awareness of something existing doesn't alter my need for that product. If I need a product I'm likely already researching it, and my data points are going to come from non-biased sources and properties that you can evaluate in an objective matter wherever possible, and when not possible a healthy dose of skepticism will be applied as a modifier.
That does not make any sense. The information function of ads have long been replaced by the concept of search engines.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Yes I'm sure all demand for products will just magically cease to exist if we got rid of ads.
Lmao
.....................squirrel!............
god this is fucking *boring* even if you skim read it.
shane_optima is butt hurt about being reject by Trump. Soooooooo buttttt huuuuurrrrrtttttt
suka
Trump has had his way with the butt hurt alt-rights and their butt is hurting when they post.
Alt-right butt hurt: It's the really really really bad kind of butt hurt that everyone pitys and glad it isn't them that butt hurt.
captcha: exceed
probably shane_optima's expectation of butt hurt and how bad it could be.
When you get older, you notice that your time is limited. You trying to waste my time peddling your shit makes you my enemy. You're trying to steal the most precious asset I have and you will be fought tooth and nail.
Hello. My name is Opportunist, you killed my time, prepare to die.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Utter bollocks. In case these idiots haven't realised, you have to wait 5 seconds to skip a youtube ad - make that 6 seconds if the window doesn't have focus, or you're slow to react. Thats not my attention span, thats literally me trying to close off your shit.
I wonder if the classic study of human visual/mental acuity "The Magic Number 7, plus or minus 2" were done today what the results would be. I have to think the number of items we can scan has gone up from UI training on screens but the understanding of what those items represent has likely gone down. Not strictly speaking an attention span function, but related.
I'm 65 and my attention span for ads is around 2 seconds (i.e., the amount of time it takes me to figure out it's an ad).
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
5 to 6 seconds? Got that beat by 5 or 6 seconds.
Head On, Apply Directly To Forehead
Every time I'm tempted to hate millennials,
Just give in to the temptation, it feels soooo good.
Three entire lines? Not reading all that crap.
What were we talking about?