I sat in a meeting where the VP of marketing was touting the rate of users who viewed the entire YouTube ad for some new ads we put out, as opposed to users skipping the ads. This was a huge success, VP and CEO repeated this great news for a good year.
Almost every ad was below the threshold where YouTube would put up the "skip" option at that time, so users really had no choice but to watch it all. "Success" was guaranteed purely based on the length of the ads.
No effort was made to actually tie anything to sales, money of any sort, except MOAR marketing staff and budget... hiring freeze for tech support and so on...
Sounds like it was a terrific success based on the metric tested. They wanted viewers to see the entire ad, and making a shorter ad guaranteed that...
Video advertising doesn't generally trigger an immediate call to action; it's always been a tool of brand awareness, so why would you want to have a longer ad if most users simply skip over it?
It was a success based on the metric. It also could not have had any other result than success based on the % of ads that could not be skipped. There was no other possible outcome.
Almost every ad was below the threshold where YouTube would put up the "skip" option at that time, so users really had no choice but to watch it all. "Success" was guaranteed purely based on the length of the ads.
No effort was made to actually tie anything to sales, money of any sort, except MOAR marketing staff and budget... hiring freeze for tech support and so on...