We decided to do viewers a favor: fast-forward to the end of our own pre-roll ad. At the end of each :15 pre-roll, viewers could click to watch the full-length ad and see what they missed. The full-length ads featured more GEICO messaging and more exposure to the brand.

Our :15 pre-roll ads ran as paid media on YouTube. At the end of each :15 pre-roll, viewers could click to watch the full-length ad (also on YouTube) and see what they missed.   

After three weeks, the campaign has over half a million views. Most importantly, the extended versions have almost as many views as the paid :15 pre-rolls. With a 91.7% correlation between paid and unpaid views, that means 9 out of 10 paid views are converted into voluntarily watching the full-length ads.

We designed these pre-roll ads with a call to action that would inspire a direct consumer response. At the end of each :15 pre-roll, viewers could click to watch the full-length ad and see what they missed. The full-length ad featured more GEICO messaging and more exposure to the brand.

Our target audience was YouTube viewers. We knew that this audience finds pre-roll ads annoying, so they “tune them out,” not paying attention. Our strategy was to create videos so disruptive and compelling that people would actually choose to watch more (then get more of our messaging as a result).

This year, we had a new pre-roll problem. A 15-second media buy without any skip buttons. Our problem was two-fold. One, keep people from hating a pre-roll ad they’re forced to watch to the end. Two, get people to pay attention to our messaging.