Distracted vs Captive Audiences | How Effective Is a 6 Second Video Ad?
If we’re to make a significant impact, we have to realize that we’re not always fighting for the attention of a distracted audience. The goal is to catch a distracted audience, establish a relationship with them, gain their trust, and turn them into a captive audience.
It’s the captive audience that we’re able to influence.
This episode (as most do) came from a personal frustration. I had yet another conversation with a digital marketer proclaiming that in order to be effective, videos must be 6 seconds.
Not sure about you, but I’ve never heard of a single 6 second video that’s inspired radical lifestyle change, overturned court rulings, or even changed corporate policy. I know of several 90 minute documentaries that have achieved that.
And yet, once we’re inside a marketing bubble, we ignore common sense, and parrot on about short attention spans and the need for videos to be no longer than 6 seconds.
In this episode, I want to unpack the difference between a distracted and captive audience, why our goal should be to build (and cater to) our captive audience, and why long-form documentaries are superior to 6 second videos.
You’ll Learn:
The difference between a distracted audience and a captive audience
How to transform a distracted audience into a captive audience
About the obsession with 6 second videos
Why Vine Failed
The Significant Impact of Long-Form Documentaries
Key Terms:
Distracted Audience - A cold audience that has no idea what your brand is, and could care less. They have no relationship with you. You haven't earned their full attention, and have to try really hard to make a significant impression.
Captive Audience - This is your audience, and they want to consume your content. They see you as a resource and appreciate the value you offer them. You have earned their attention and are able to impact them.
Episode Transcript
Hey. How's it going everybody? In this episode, we are talking about distracted versus captive audiences and essentially your goal is to create a captive audience. The goal is to attract a distracted audience and then turn them into a captive audience.
Technically, that's obvious. People who don't know your brand don't understand the value of what you provide when they first interact with you. When they first come across your initial marketing. They are distracted because they're they're doing something else. Let's just say, for example, I'm driving down the road, I am a distracted audience because I'm driving down the road and your billboard pops up.
The whole point of that billboard is to be an interruption along my drive. To itself is a distraction. Right. So it's grabbing my attention. I'm coming up and I'm looking at that thing and and in that moment, I am a distracted audience. And the goal of the billboard is to to provide an impression, a repeatable impression. If this is my regular my regular drive, right.
If I'm on this road multiple times. The point of that billboard is to provide an impression to a distracted person. So that way it will start to build that brand's presence inside of my internal experience. Right. I'm experiencing them more and more and more. They basically have shown that that just from a from a billboard, a, you need to see that billboard somewhere between three to four times for it to actually like that brand, to start to lodge in your mind and start to change your behavior.
Now, this might not be like significant behavior change, OK? It's probably just mild behavior change in the sense of you acknowledge the existence of the billboard and you recognize it, you regard it, and and maybe you talk about it Mark Spain. Mark, Spain as a realtor who has billboards all over the place in Georgia and even going up into North Carolina, and maybe beyond, who knows?
But he has this hilariously goofy billboard where it is just his face as per usual, with most real estate agents. But it's his face giving the goofiest smile. And it's awesome. Right? It's just silly, like her and and my wife and I, we have regular conversations about this billboard, right? That is behavior change, right? It's the fact that we have we have noticed it.
It has made an impression on us to the point where it's changed our behavior in the fact that we talk about it. OK. But if I were to tell you right, like name off a real estate agent, well, first, Pam would be the first list because that's my real estate agent. But then second, it would be Mark Spain, because I have seen it and I've known it's made an impression on me.
So that is a is is sort of like you're you're communicating to a distracted audience but the goal isn't just to constantly only be communicating to the distracted audience. You want to bring them down that funnel, you want to establish a relationship with them. You need to establish a strong emotional bond with that lead. So that way they feel attached to you and they begin to trust you.
And they start to do business with you. Right now, I have no emotional bond with me and Mark Spain. Right. It is that level of of mockery, right? Because I think the face is making it. The billboard is funny. Mark Spain, if you actually ever listen to this. Totally sorry. You're probably a great dude. OK, obviously you're crushing it, right?
But what I'm saying is that there is a still a gap. There's still a cavern between where I am right now as as a potential customer of his to where he would actually want me to be. Right. The point of the billboard is the billboard itself can't cross that chasm. It can't lead me across that great divide because that divide requires emotional attachment.
It requires an establishment of trust. And it's not just just something that's designed for a distracted audience that's going to push that thing over The reason why I'm talking about this is that I had another another conversation with a digital marketer. And it it is this same conversation that I that I have had. It keep continues to be a recurring conversation with digital marketers.
And and usually I'm introducing myself, you know, I make documentary films for, for brands, and they're just like, oh, yeah, that's, that's awesome. You know, videos work best when they're 6 seconds it's just like f my life right there. Like, if I have that, I would like, all right, you and I, we just we're not going to be friends, you know, like, for like be able to be friends.
Now, the thing is, is that and this is kind of what I want to get into and just really focus on is this obsession with the six second video. All right. And and really think about what is the purpose of the six second video, okay? Because the unfortunate thing is when I when I've had this conversation is that it's never like it's never said in the sense from the perspective of a six second video is a valuable tool within your entire marketing plan.
And and and kind of like with that understanding of that approach. Right it's it's usually a narrow focus of like videos must be 6 seconds to be effective. OK that's the narrow focus that I have. So I'm not dogging anybody on thinking that a six second video is like if you appreciate six second ads, right, that you're a bad person.
I'm just saying it's like it becomes a problem when you see it as an an end all, be all. You don't see it as an opportunity for another additional approach that you can try within your marketing toolbox. It's almost like this blanket statement of this blanket belief that videos must be short, videos must be 2 seconds. I mean, videos must be 6 seconds for some reason.
6 seconds is this necessity? Right. Why are they obsessed with 6 seconds? The pre-roll YouTube ads essentially that's that's kind of where this whole six second time frame has come from. But in order to really like start to really you first have to ask is like is 6 seconds effective? Right. Like, is 6 seconds is a six second ad effective? Because the irony of when I when I'm meeting these people is that it's usually inside of some sort of a networking event.
Right. And then these networking events oftentimes will have specific see if it's like, you know, like a chamber of Commerce or something. Oftentimes they'll have like a specific meeting dedicated to people standing up and giving their elevator pitch and they give everybody 30 seconds to give your elevator pitch. It's almost like a standard that an elevator pitch should be at a maximum about 30 seconds, right?
That you should be able to explain what you do within 30 seconds to a minute. But usually it's about 30 seconds because that's the length of time that you're inside of an elevator. It's where the whole term comes from.
It's never 6 seconds. It's 30 seconds because it's a known thing that it takes about that amount of time to explain who you are and what you do. OK, and even in a 32nd elevator pitch, people aren't just going to be like, Oh my gosh, I got to buy from you. I got to, I got to do business with this person, right?
Like that is your pitch. And then beyond that pitch, you then have to have multiple other conversations specific sales cycles, especially within service based industries, can be rather long, especially if you're doing something niche like I do or, or say you're, you're your product or service is a little bit more complicated, right? Like it takes a while. You might have an extended sales cycle.
So so it's like not every business is immediately understood, immediately recognizable. Not every service has has their offer is is that simple were 6 seconds is even enough time to explain what they actually do, let alone even create that emotional connection the six second is designed for a distracted audience. So like I said, we got to go back to like, where the heck did 6 seconds come from?
6 seconds is the amount of time that YouTube gives you for non skeptical pre-roll video ads. OK, so let's think about this in context. It is a non-skippable pre-roll video ad what does that mean? That means it is a unwanted interruption.
That occurs to somebody who wants to watch a specific YouTube video. You have clicked a specific YouTube video because you want to watch it and this video comes as an unwanted interruption. And it before you get to actually watch the video that you want to watch already you're you're meeting this with resistance and anger. Unlike a billboard where I do not get angry when I see billboards because it's not interrupting what I'm doing.
And it's not delaying what I'm doing, if that makes sense. It is interrupting what I'm doing. But it's not a delay. Like seeing a billboard does not delay me from getting to somewhere on time unless I get, like, super distracted and have an accident because I'm looking at the billboard. OK, but the video is a delay. It's an unwanted thing.
Therefore, it is a piece of content designed to catch a distracted audience. But it's also meeting that audience with already they are not just distracted but they're on guard. OK, I think it's already been shown that that consumers have already developed the ability to to be blind to banner ads. Banner ads just aren't that effective because we have developed a way of literally like blocking them out of our vision and willfully ignoring them.
OK, and and I'm not sure about you, but when I'm on YouTube and I'm watching videos I also have started to develop the skill of willfully ignoring the six second video ad. I will I will consciously look away look down, mute it like because I can't skip it and it just makes me mad. So I feel like I'm doing this Whack-A-Mole game with that video ad so that that's what I mean by distracted, right?
It is a piece of content that is intended to be distracted. So you're already looking at that situation like do they really do that? Well, OK, I would love to see evidence. I would love to see evidence of financial success for these six second video ads. Like I personally haven't been able to find it yet. If you can actually find it and send it to me, I would appreciate that because that would help me to better formulate my thoughts around this.
But but that's the situation in which you're in when you're trying to build these six second ads and you're trying to get somebody attention. OK, now the social media platforms, when they produce their articles and they tell you how awesome this stuff is, they're they're already coming at that with the agenda that you're supposed to accept that it's great.
Does that make sense? So if you're getting a lot of your marketing information from YouTube specifically, or Google or a Facebook White Paper, or even just even the social media like what are those things called scheduling platforms like Buffer or whatever. Like they're going to be slanted in favor of the social media platforms, OK? And the platforms are often having to do this delicate balance between satisfying satisfy satisfying the user experience as well as attempting to make it good enough for the advertisers so that way they can find the user's joyride, if that makes sense.
OK, because these companies don't make money outside of that, aside from selling your data. Right. But but like so that that's kind of how they are going to generate revenue. They're going to sell your data back to advertisers or the government, and then they're going to sell ad space to advertisers. The product on these social media things is us.
It's our it's our attention, right? So they they need us there, but they're primarily data collecting companies. They're not necessarily there. They're figuring out 6 seconds is probably the amount of time that won't really make somebody super angry before they watch the next video. I've had situations where I've been forced to watch a an extended non-skippable ad that was maybe like a minute long or something.
And when I saw that, I would have to sit for a minute with this non-skippable video ad, I bounced out of the video. I didn't even watch the video that I wanted to watch because I'm like, I'm not going to wait this long to watch this video. I'll go find another video to watch right what you want somebody to do is you don't want to be that disruption, right?
I'm not saying that that's not valuable that that having a six second ad isn't valuable, but the six second ad is very much like the billboard, but you're already trying to fight certain aggressors that are added on to it. So it makes it even more difficult to present your company in a positive way and establish that emotional connection.
You're already working in a working with an uphill battle if that makes sense. So yeah, it's probably useful to to advertise in that way because you will be able to build certain brand recognition and certain like put yourself in that customer's environment enough to where they've had enough impressions with you, to where now your present part of their world, OK, but it's not going to be enough to establish that emotional connection because like I said, they're already a little aggravated.
I would much rather be the video that they're clicking on to watch rather than being the interruption before that video why not do that? But like why not make the video that the person has clicked on to watch instead of just being the interruption that makes them angry? OK, so because when we're thinking about like that is when you have a captive audience that is coming to you that is willfully going to your content to watch it.
And it's in that situation when you when you've gotten to that level of a relationship, that's when you've now established you've established a desire they want to come and watch your content. Clearly, they see value in it. Right? And and with an extended period of time, you have the ability now to establish a deep emotional connection. And when you've established that emotional connection, now you have the ability to influence to influence them, right?
To change behavior, to inspire them to take action, to change their minds, to get them to think about an idea in a different way. Right. It depends on what your video is there to do. Are you there to try to move your mission forward? Right. Well, you need to sell them on your idea of the mission. Six second ad is allowing you to do that.
You need a longer form piece of content to sell somebody on your mission. Do you need to behavior change, behavior change, which is essentially convincing somebody to purchase your product. You know, like you're probably not going to be able to achieve that within 6 seconds. You need a longer format of time to be able to do that. So what I'm saying here is that this isn't a knock against 6 seconds videos.
This is a knock against the obsession of six second videos.
Let's look at a case study. Two let's look at Vine for a second. Vine was an entire platform dedicated to a six second video format that peaked back in about 2014. It's not around anymore. All right. Because it died, OK? And what happened was like the this social media platform was quickly popped up by Twitter. But Twitter Twitter purchased it but then didn't really know what to do with the thing.
And this was even kind of earlier on in Twitter when no one really knew what the heck to do with Twitter, when Twitter was really struggling financially to even start making money. OK, now the platform was fun and people were being hyper creative on that. Vine was essentially six second videos that looped around. People were being hyper creative, and you ended up creating some really interesting like like Internet celebrities on Vine.
But Vine was doomed because it didn't adapt quickly enough. What happened was the bigger social media platforms, specifically Instagram, saw what I was doing, saw that, hey, people are people are like exploding on this. We've got to compete with Vine. So what did Instagram do? Well, Instagram created the ability they I'm not sure if this was when they started shorts, but they created the ability to to create videos.
Right. Or stories. Maybe this when they they did their story thing, but now you can do videos on Instagram. All right. And they let you do it up to 15 seconds and the fact that they let you do it up to 15 seconds people saw on their Vine platform more ability for creative opportunity and they left Vine also wasn't just a user thing.
Vine also had to struggle to entice advertisers to come and spend their money on the platform. They were struggling to make money. Why? Maybe it's the fact that 6 seconds isn't a valuable enough amount of time for somebody to successfully sell something just a guess. OK, so if you have a choice, right? If you're if you're trying to sell something, you've got a choice.
Do I want 6 seconds to sell it or do I want 15 seconds to sell it? Well, I'm probably going to choose the 15 second thing because I can connect. I can tell more of a story I can establish more of an emotional attachment. I have more time to explain my value. I have more time to to communicate my message right.
And and for a consumer, is there really a difference between six to 15 seconds? Right. Like they probably want more time anyways because it's probably harder for them to make sense of all these six second things. And so that's what happened. Vine died, Instagram went off and then quickly increased their video length from from 15 seconds to 30 seconds to a minute.
Now you've got tick tock, right? Tick Tock is almost like Vine 2.0 but even tick tock, if you look at the stats of the tick tock video, I think the optimal length is somewhere around the 32nd mark somewhere between about 20 seconds to 40 plus seconds or something. So it's an hour on average around 30 seconds, as is said to be the optimal length of a tick tock video and even tick tock.
They had extended their limit up to 3 minutes and even recently extended it up to 10 minutes. OK, so even these platforms are like, well heck, let's give people longer time to say stuff right I have not heard of a single vine or a single six second ad that has toppled governments changed corporate policy, freed people from prison, overruled court decisions.
Right. Caused massive like life changes in individuals. Never heard of that before. Never. Like, if you seriously if that exists, again, please send it my way. I would love to read it because I will I will want to form a more educated understanding about the effectiveness of a six second video. But I've never seen it because I don't think it exists because I think it's impossible.
OK, I don't think that 6 seconds is nearly enough time to to create that amount of impact. If you want to create that amount of impact, it requires an engaged audience. It can't it can't be done with a distracted audience. It requires an engaged audience. OK, but you've got you've got documentaries like Food Inc my cousin is a vegan because he watched Food Inc my friend doesn't eat sugar anymore because he saw a documentary.
SeaWorld ended their shampoo program because of Blackfish, the documentary. All right. Like there are so many examples of documentaries causing significant transformation in individuals lives or in our entire culture and society. But a six second video just doesn't do that. And yet we're so obsessed with the effectiveness of six second videos and thinking they're an end all, be all.
You know, it'd be awesome. A six second video ad that promotes a longer form video for your company, right? Like the goal isn't to feel like you're constantly battling a distracted audience. I think the perspective should be, how do we turn this distracted audience into an engaged audience? How do we entice them to to enter into our ecosystem and to watch our film that we've specifically engineered to train to be transformative, OK, to truly communicate our full message?
Because if you think about that, that's the whole purpose of the marketing sales relationship anyways. Like your marketing is there to capture the lead, so that way you pass that on to sales. So if you think about it of like, well, how do we streamline this? How do we put this this sales marketing relationship at scales? That way, when they come, they're super warm.
Will, you market your old marketing materials, right? Run a campaign for your longer form videos that you actually want somebody to watch, push them to watch that stuff. Get them get them to want to watch your, your other, your longer form content or get them to want to read your longer form content. Right? Promote that because you know that you've that it requires an investment, right?
Like purchasing your product or service is an investment from the consumer and therefore getting building that relationship is also an investment of the consumer. So first they invest their attention, then they invest their emotion, then they invest their trust, their hopes. Right? And then they invest their money. That's the sequence. And so you want to just kind of like work yourself out of the six second thing.
And if you ever find somebody who's promoting the six second thing, you know, maybe, maybe throw this into the conversation a little bit. Talk to them about the difference between a distracted and an engaged audience and that your goal is to create that engaged audience. And you're going to create that by rewarding that audience with content that's worth their time and attention by demonstrating to them that they are valuable to you and by investing in longer content format pieces that will establish that relationship earn their trust and push them over the line.
So that way they will commit that they will do business with you, that they will support your cause, that they will even change their mind or even change their behavior. All right. Hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, as always, find me on Instagram or Twitter at Storyteller, Agent, and or you can just reach out to me directly at McNabbstorytelling.com and I will see you in the next one.
Take care.