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Millennials Only Have a 5 To 6 Second Attention Span For Ads (cnbc.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the act-surprised dept.

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.

9 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. I'm way older, I have zero attention for ads. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Fuck ads. Fuck people who make boring, standard advertising. You are worth none of my time.

  2. poor millenials by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  3. Could have just left off "For Ads"... by tlambert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Could have just left off "For Ads"...

    Just saying...

  4. Blipverts by mentil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Blipverts by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Nice. I was really hoping to see Max Headroom pop back up for the modern era. When watching that show I distinctly remember thinking: "Wait a minute, how can corporations be more powerful than the government?". I wish i could go back to that innocence.....

      --
      Good-bye
  5. Re:29... 28... Goodbye by grim4593 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been induated with ads for so long that I automatically phase them out unless it is something I am interested in. On ad spammy sites like click through articles I don't even see ad banners anymore. For unskippable video ads I just move over to another browser tab until it is over.

  6. Millennials have that long an attention span? by Jason1729 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:Millenial attention span, in general.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'll be 48 in a couple of days.
    My attention span for ads is zero.
    MythTV auto commercial skipping FTW!

  8. Re:Perhaps by Freischutz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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."

    If I recall correctly 4 (or is it 5?) seconds is the time you have to endure a commercial on YouTube before you can skip the ad so a 5-6 second attention span sounds about right. If I were trying to advertise under those time constraints the first two thirds of the ad would consist of a loud commanding voice saying: "Do you need X? Well then get off your ass and buy Y!" or something to that effect. The remainder of the ad time would be consumed by a voice quickly blurting out the following: "And here is an extra second of ad for you to skip so you don't feel cheated.". The problem with all these ad services is that they don't show me what I'm interested in even when they manage to cram their message into a 4-5 second package. I sit there watching documentaries about sword fighting, medieval history, Classical history, palaeontology, relativistic space travel, documentaries about all manner of phenomena in space, .... etc. I'm usually logged in on YouTube so you'd think Google ingenious advertising algorithms would be able to target ads at my interests given my very specific YouTube viewing history. You'd think I'd be flooded with ads trying to sell me swords, armour, history books, the collective works of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, trips to Florida or French Guiana to tour the NASA/ESA space ports but nooooooo... I get ads for ridiculous online games, Chinese pop music, Illumibowl toilet lights....