Nerd Alert: Skippable vs. Non-Skippable Ads

Summary

The Marketing Architects – "Nerd Alert: Skippable vs. Non-Skippable Ads"

Date: November 20, 2025
Hosts: Leonard Jasper & Rob Demars
Main Theme:
A research-backed exploration of skippable vs. non-skippable ads. The episode dives into recent academic research, translating findings to real-world marketing strategies. The hosts discuss how each ad type shapes brand recall, salience, and conversion, and draw actionable insights for marketers.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Skippable vs. Non-Skippable Debate

• The hosts set up the episode as a deep dive into research about whether allowing viewers to skip ads makes a meaningful difference in ad effectiveness.
• Leonard Jasper (B) outlines the study: "Make Ads Skippable or Not. The Impact of Ad Type on Brand Recall Salience and Conversion Rate" conducted by Radka Barova and Veronika Kopriova.
  • Focus: How the option to skip influences immediate brand recall, salience during buying decisions, and conversion rates.
  • Study group: Gen Z participants; tested with YouTube-style video ads.

Notable Quote:

"This study dives into the difference between skippable and non skippable ads and how that choice can change the way people remember, feel about, and buy from your brand."
— Leonard Jasper (00:45)

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2. Initial Reactions & Hypotheses

• Rob shares his gut feeling: forcing viewers to watch seems better for immediate response, but allowing skipping could foster goodwill and positive brand association.
• The hosts clarify that the study looked at people who watched the whole ad, whether or not there was a skip option.

Notable Quote:

"It just seems like a very polite gesture for the brand to offer, like, hey, we're pretty cool. But if you don't want to hang out with us, you know, here's this, here's a skip button."
— Rob Demars (02:20)

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3. Study Methodology

• Experiment Details (02:50)
  • Participants: Gen Z, divided into three groups: skippable, non-skippable, and a mix.
  • Metrics: Brand recall, brand salience (ease of remembering in buying situations), and actual purchase behavior.
  • Tools: Eye-tracking technology to monitor attention focus.

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4. Research Findings Unpacked

• Brand Recall:
  • Skippable ads led to higher short-term brand recall. (04:19)
• Brand Salience:
  • Non-skippable ads performed better over the long term; brands were more likely to come to mind during actual purchase decisions. (04:44)
• Conversions:
  • Slightly higher for skippable ads—the posited reason is a more positive feeling due to lack of force, making viewers more receptive. However, the margin is slim and possibly not statistically significant. (05:18)

Notable Exchange:

Rob: "I'm just going to stick with my answer and say the one that didn't have the skip button in it."
Leonard: "You're wrong. It's skippable. Damn. I would have thought the same thing though." (05:13 - 05:18)

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5. The "Area of Interest Effect" & Creative Implications

• Eye-tracking insights:
  • In skippable ads, viewers spent excessive visual attention on the skip button itself. If the skip button dominates attention, recall for the ad drops.
  • Front-loading brand/logo and emotional hooks before the skip window is crucial.
• Best-performing ads:
  • Those that immediately grab attention—using humor, surprise, or emotion—minimize loss of attention to the skip button. (05:51)

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6. Tactical Takeaways for Marketers

Actionable Insights:

• Front-load content: Show the logo and key messages before the skip window—"Don't save your logo or key message for the end of your ad. If 60% of people are going to skip at five seconds, make sure you've delivered value before they do." (06:45)
• Use emotional hooks: Humor and emotion reduce skipping and boost recall.
• Align ad type with goals:
  • Long-term brand building: Choose non-skippable for salience.
  • Quick attention/grab: Skippable may work better.
• Ad quality > ad format: Engaging creative drives results in both formats.
• Test and optimize: There's no one-size-fits-all—brands should A/B test both approaches, given the nuanced differences.

Memorable Metaphor:

"Think of skippable and non-skippable ads like two gears in the same machine. Skippable ads grab quick attention, but non-skippable ads build familiarity over time, perfect for staying power. The smartest brands don't pick a gear. They shift between both to keep momentum."
— Leonard Jasper (07:19)

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7. Listener Questions and Further Nuance

• Rob wonders whether the ad creative was identical across skippable/non-skippable groups (08:01). Leonard confirms: Yes, only the skip button changed, not the ad itself.
• They discuss experimental limitations and the value of further testing (08:53).
• Leonard corrects an earlier statement: participants could actually skip in the experiment, not just view the ad in full (08:40).
• The hosts highlight the importance of continually testing ad structure, creative placements, and skip button positioning for optimization.

Notable Quote:

"It just makes you want to try a lot of different tests, right?… There's a lot of interesting variables."
— Rob Demars (08:16)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:45 — Study overview: impact of skippable vs. non-skippable ads.
• 02:50 — Study design and methodology explained.
• 04:19 — Key finding: Skippable ads win on brand recall.
• 04:44 — Non-skippable ads win on brand salience (long-term memory).
• 05:18 — Conversion rates: skippable ads slightly edge out.
• 05:51 — Creative tactics: front-loading, emotion, avoiding ad blindness.
• 07:19 — Metaphor: skippable and non-skippable as complementary gears.
• 08:01 — Rob queries about ad creative consistency; clarification on methods.
• 08:53 — Leonard corrects earlier statements on experiment context.

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Tone and Delivery

The hosts kept the conversation lively, geeky, and conversational—mixing serious research takeaways with jokes and playful banter. Rob played skeptic and comic relief, while Leonard drove the narrative with clear, research-backed explanations.

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Summary Takeaway

• Both skippable and non-skippable ads serve a purpose. Skippable ads drive swift recall and positive sentiment, but non-skippable ads are better for long-term brand salience.
• Great creative trumps ad type. Marketers should focus on rapid engagement (within 5 seconds), emotion, and consistent A/B testing.
• There’s no one right answer—test, iterate, and pick your strategy based on your goals and audience.

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Memorable closer:

"Go forth and build great marketing."
— Marketing Architects (09:34)

Transcript

[A]

Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?

[B]

Yes, exactly. But a bunch of nerds.

[A]

Nerd alert. That's right.

[B]

Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Leonard Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects. And I'm joined by my co host, Rob demars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

Hello. We're back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week, I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas into simple, understandable language for Rob, and of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?

[A]

Elena, I just finished reading 50 Shades of Nerd, and now my calculator's feeling muy caliente.

[B]

Oh, my gosh, that one had me nervous for a second. Okay, this week I read Make Ads Skippable or Not. The Impact of Ad Type on Brand Recall Salience and Conversion Rate. This was published earlier this year by Radka Barova and Veronika Kopriova from the Sicilian University in the Czech Republic. This study dives into the difference between skippable and non skippable ads and how that choice can change the way people remember, feel about, and buy from your brand. But before I get into the paper, Rob, when. What do you think leads to more effective advertising? If you force viewers to watch your entire ad or you let them skip after, say, five seconds.

[A]

Okay, so this sort of feels like a trick question because in terms of immediate response, you don't want someone to skip your ad because they're not going to be able to go and respond to whatever value proposition you're doing in the moment. But I have to think in the long term, perhaps someone has a positive association with your brand because it's like, hey, you don't have to stick with us if you don't want to. So I feel like it's kind of a. I feel like it's a trick question.

[B]

Alayna, I should add, this feels like an important caveat. I should have added this study. It's looking at giving them the option to skip, but they're looking at people.

[A]

Who watched the ads got it. So they didn't skip it. They watched the whole thing.

[B]

It's just in one you had an option and one you didn't.

[A]

God. I think that viewers like a brand more if they're offered the skip button. That's just my.

[B]

My.

[A]

It just seems like a very polite gesture for the brand to offer, like, hey, we're pretty Cool. But if you don't want to hang out with us, you know, here's this, here's a skip button.

[B]

Yeah, we're going to get into a couple. They looked at a few different areas, looked at brand recall, brand salience and conversion rate. But I'd say that general sentiment is correct and I would feel that way too. Like, like sometimes when you're really not in the mood for an ad and you don't have that skip button, that can be, you're like, oh man, that can be pretty frustrating.

[A]

You better be a good ad if you're gonna make me watch you.

[B]

Exactly. So here's how they conducted this study. They ran an experiment with Gen Z participants and they used eye tracking to see where their attention went when they were watching either skippable or non skippable YouTube style video ads, which is probably what most of us think of when we think of skippable non skippable ads. Then the participants were asked to buy products online in categories like food, household goods and travel so the team could measure recall and purchase behavior. So not a perfect study because it's all in the lab, but still interesting. Participants were split into three groups. One who saw the skippable ads. That's the kind you can skip after five seconds. Another who saw the non skippable ads, and then a control group with a mix of both. Then they measured how many brands. Participants remembered how salient those brands were. So basically how easily they came to mind in real purchase situations and then whether those brands influence what people actually chose to buy later. So Rob, if you had a guess, which group do you think remembered the most brands? The skippable group or the non skippable group or this mix of people?

[A]

God, this is. I just feel like I'm going to totally say the wrong thing here, but I'm just going to go with my logical brain here, which is going to be wrong, and say that if it didn't offer the skip button, you were more likely to remember the brand. Because I'm not being given a choice for my brain to be thinking about. I got this skip button here. Should I skip or should I keep watching? Like it's just causing mental friction? I don't know. Elena, tell me I'm wrong.

[B]

Yeah, you're wrong. But I figured there's, there's, there's nuance to it. So when the participants had the option to skip ads, they did remember more brands. However, non skippable ads scored higher in brand salience. So you're kind of right. And Wrong. So maybe people didn't recall the ads immediately, but those brands stuck in their memory longer. They came up during later purchase decisions.

[A]

So basically, if it had the skip button in it.

[B]

So in the short term skippable ads won on recall, but in the long term, non skippable ads went on salience.

[A]

Oh, there we go.

[B]

Does that make sense?

[A]

So it does.

[B]

Yes. So you were right. In the long term, like in buying situations, they also looked at conversions. So they tracked what people actually bought afterwards and they found that conversion rates were slightly higher for. Do you want to guess? What do you think? Which group do you think bought more stuff, skippable or non skippable?

[A]

I'm just going to stick with my answer and say the one that didn't have the skip button in it.

[B]

You're wrong. It's skippable. Damn. I would have thought the same thing though. And the theory was maybe these viewers felt more positive towards the brands and less forced, which was your thought earlier. But the margin was small. So I'm thinking we probably can't really count on that for anything. Honestly, after reading this study, if I were a brand I would just test both is probably how I would handle this. However, they did find another thing that I thought was kind of interesting. They called it the area of interest effect. So eye tracking showed that in skippable ads, viewers spent a ton of time staring at the skip ad button. So it became like this gravitational force which is what you were talking about earlier. You think that would have affected things. However it did. So in certain cases, if the skip button caused too much of that area of interest effect, recall dropped for those specific ads. So the ads that performed best were the ones that grabbed attention right away with humor, surprise or emotional appeal before that 5 second mark even hit. So I think that'd be really interesting to look at. There are some results that there are some ads where if it's not interesting or engaging and there's a skip button, it becomes a real hindrance to the advertisement. But if it's an interesting ad, people thousand questions. No, no, I'm not answering them. Okay, so some takeaways. First, front load your brand. Don't be. This is something we would agree with 100%. Don't save your logo or key message for the end of your ad. If 60% of people are going to skip at five seconds, make sure you've delivered value before they do. Use emotion to stop the scroll. The study found that ads using humor or strong emotional cues reduce skipping and increased recall. Then pick Your goal if it's long term brand building and salience. According to the study, non skippable wins and avoid ad blindness. So repetition and clutter can desensitize your audience. Both ad types work better with entertaining creative, not just more frequency. So overall I would say you know what matters more than this decision? How good your ad is. However, if I were a marketer, I would probably test both but quickly. For RobGPT, think of skippable and non skippable ads like two gears in the same machine. Skippable ads grab quick attention, but non skippable ads build familiarity over time, perfect for staying power. The smartest brands don't pick a gear. They shift between both to keep momentum.

[A]

I don't expect you to have this answer, but I'm wondering if it did say in the study at all if the actual ad they used in all of the different groups was the same. Because could the ad unit itself and how it was presented influence at all? A bad example would be like what if you put your logo next to the skip button? If everyone's looking at the heat map with the skip button, then why wouldn't you place your logo more in that area?

[B]

Yes, the. To answer your question first, the skippable non skippable people saw the same ads. So they didn't change the ads. They just had a skip button for one group and they didn't have one for the other.

[A]

Same, same ad. Yeah, got it, got it. Cool.

[B]

Kind of interesting though.

[A]

This is really interesting. It just makes you want to try a lot of different tests, right? To just play around with the locations. I mean this is obviously what folks do in that channel is they're always evaluating best ways to use the skip button, the colors, the location of the storyline to when the skip button comes up. It's just a lot of interesting variables.

[B]

I should also add when I was looking for that answer, I found that I was wrong at the beginning when I said, oh, they can, they have to watch them. That's not true. They could skip them in the group where they had like skip as an option.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They weren't forced to just watch it the whole time. But I would think in an experiment you might feel more pressure. Should just watch the ad the whole time.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But that's just my assumption. So I should clarify.

[A]

Yeah, totally. Because that seems absolutely. You would go, I'm not skipping it because you're telling me to watch this.

[B]

Yeah, but super cool. And that's something I've always thought the opposite. Like I was like, you I always thought it's better to have non skippable. That's even what I've heard. Experiment's interesting. I would still ab test it. Yeah, that's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn, and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing.

[A]

I completely read this question wrong.

[B]

How'd you read it?

[A]

I will answer this, but. Okay, okay. Well, I'm just going to. I'm just going to answer this the way I prepared for it, and you can tell me if this hits the bill. So. Okay.

[B]

Marketing Architects.