30-second banner ads?
"Good news, for this banner ad, we have a media buy that allows for 30 seconds."
I've heard this news gleefully delivered in a few different banner ad kickoffs lately; 30 seconds, rather than the standard 15. So, let's back up...
First, why?
Is a user likely to sit and watch a banner ad for 30 seconds? They're not even likely to watch for 15 seconds.
Let's say that on average a user is only likely to watch a banner ad for 5 seconds — that's actually an optimistic assumption. Does it matter if they're watching 5 seconds of a 15-second ad, or 5 seconds of a 30-second ad? Nope. And the 30-second ad, of course, requires more effort and budget — more art time, more copy time, more dev time, more routing/editing time — for what is ultimately probably going to produce the same result. Your client is spending more, and there's no benefit to them.
One exception here could be a screen takeover, where the user can't access the site's main content until after they've watched the full 30-second ad — you know, like we see on YouTube and other streaming services. However, if you're in pharma marketing like I have been for most of my career, we very rarely do these in our business, at least not as typical display ads. These takeover ads may be done as actual streaming videos on certain sites, but that's a whole different animal from the html-based banner ads we're talking about here.
So, I don't think it's a stretch to say that writing/designing/programming twice as much banner content is just not a good use of our client's budget. It would probably be better to spend that extra budget on two different 15-second banner campaigns!
And along those lines, here's a goofy idea: I have a theory we may see better success with a 15-second banner ad that's really just the same brief, bold, 5-second message, — and playing three times. Why not try it? I'd love to see a test of that versus a typical 15-second ad in the same style, with more content that leads to the CTA (call to action). I would not be surprised at all if the CTA by itself, along with some eye-catching animation, performs just as well, if not better.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.