Structured Utility
Video Advertisers: You have exactly two seconds to catch my attention.
I’m not sure if this has been measured before as I would imagine the complexity to measure usability in this way might be a bit different than typical web-usability, but…
For those of you who are creating video ads and converting them to Quicktime or Flash formats, if you have audio that starts right off the bat (without a user initiating the video), I have a couple of notes for you:
- If you have it start automatically, you’re interrupting my browsing experience. Pop-ups used to do that.
- A lot of your ads, maybe it’s because I’m interested in marketing/advertising, I do want to see and am interested in them. Some of them, I’ve even sent to friends.
- If you (or your boss) insist on having the audio start right off the bat, you have less than three seconds before I stop your ad. That means, you have exactly two seconds to catch my attention. Don’t start with music. Start by telling me why I need to keep watching and listening.
Hope that helps. 
Does anyone know of any research statistics for video advertisements?