Is six seconds enough? The impact of short-form ads

Stephen Whiteside

MediaScience, the research firm, and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science have conducted early research into the power of short-form ads.

Six-second ads have become an increasingly common feature of the advertising ecosystem, with YouTube, Facebook, and FOX among the vendors spreading this new format across digital and television screens.

To date, these short-form messages largely remain an area of experimentation for agencies and brands alike. Guidance for these early adopters, however, is now at hand thanks to a trio of studies conducted by MediaScience, the neuroscience research firm, and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, a division of the School of Marketing at the University of South Australia.

One important learning? Short-form advertising often punches above its modest duration when...

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