Why your ad looks good and sells nothing

The ad came back and it was lovely. Good colour, good music, the product looked more expensive than it is. You showed it to two people and both of them said it looked professional.

Then it ran, and nothing happened. You are now going through it frame by frame trying to work out which part is broken, and possibly none of it is. It was made to be a good video. It was never made to be an advert.

Those are two different objects. They are judged by two different people, on two different days.

What is an ad judged on?

The job the campaign hired it for, which for most direct-response work is a sale or a qualified click, and is sometimes a stage before that. Whatever the job is, it is a more unforgiving standard than anything else in video.

A film is judged on whether it is any good. A tutorial is judged on whether somebody learned something. An ad is judged on whether it did the job it was bought to do: for a direct-response ad, whether a stranger who was not looking for you stopped, understood what you were selling, and pressed a button; where the job is awareness or consideration, against the measure that fits that job instead. The grade, the music, the transitions, the typography: each is either helping that happen or spending attention it cannot spare.

So the first question about any frame is not whether it is good. It is what that frame is doing for the job the ad was hired to do.

What does an editor optimise for?

Something that holds together. That is the training, and it is a good training.

An editor needs the campaign brief as well as the footage. Rhythm, clarity and structure should serve the intended response, whether that is understanding, a click or a sale.

None of that is wrong. It is aimed at somebody who has already agreed to watch. In a feed, nobody has agreed to anything.

What the media buyer needs instead

Two things, and they fail independently.

The first is whether the opening earned any attention. Media buyers watch this as the hook rate, a column they build from the share of people who saw the first moment and were still there a few seconds later. It reads the opening more than anything else, though it moves with who the ad reached too: a mismatched audience can drag it down whatever the first seconds do.

The second is whether the people who stayed then clicked. That one is a report card on the middle and the end: on whether the offer was legible, whether the reason to act arrived, whether the thing on the button matched the thing in the video.

This is the part that catches people out. Those two measures point at different halves of the same file, which means you cannot repair a weak opening by improving the middle. A better second half reaches only the people the first half already kept, and if the first half kept a handful, the better second half is being made for an audience of you.

Healthy early viewing and clicks narrow the investigation, but do not clear the creative entirely. Check whether the advert attracted the right expectation, then inspect the offer, landing page, audience and purchase path.

Why is the first moment carrying so much?

Because the viewer did not come for you and is not being polite.

The window an ad gets is not short the way a short film is short. It is short the way a door held open by somebody's foot is short. Everything that has to be understood arrives inside it, and what usually occupies that space is a logo, a drone shot of a coastline, or a few words of atmosphere before the sentence begins.

Which is why nothing in an ad gets to be there for its own sake. Not the shot you were proud of, not the transition, not the second half of a sentence whose first half made the point.

Watch it muted, on a phone, in a feed

This is the one thing to do this week, and it costs nothing.

Put the ad on your phone. Turn the sound off. Hold it at arm's length, the way you hold it on a sofa rather than the way you hold it when inspecting something. Then let it arrive rather than presenting it to yourself: start it while you are looking away, or line it up after a couple of unrelated clips, so the first moment has to catch you the way it would in a feed.

Ask two questions at the moment it appears. Can I tell what is being sold. Is there any reason on screen to keep watching.

Then do the harder version. Hand your phone to somebody who does not know the product, say nothing at all, and watch their thumb rather than the screen. The moment their thumb moves is the moment your ad ended, whatever the file says.

Muted matters. If the whole argument is carried by a voiceover, then the ad only works for whoever happens to have their sound on, and you do not get to choose who that is.

Does this mean ads should be ugly?

No, and this is where the argument usually gets taken too far.

Production choices can affect credibility and comprehension. Choose the finish that suits the product, audience and placement, then test the response rather than assuming polish guarantees trust.

The difference is what the craft is in service of. In a film, the craft is the point. In an ad, it is there to make a claim believable fast, and the moment a beautiful decision costs comprehension, comprehension wins.

What to do with the ad you already have

Try removing the opening two seconds and compare both versions. If the shorter version is clearer and still carries the right tone and context, you have a useful candidate to test.

That test tends to answer the question people arrive with. The ad is rarely broken. It usually starts slightly after the place it should have started, and the decision in front of you is whether to recut what you have or brief the next one differently.

Sources and evidence

Our method. Watching an ad muted, on a phone, dropped unannounced into a feed, and cutting the first two seconds to see whether they were doing anything, is how this studio tests an opening. It is a working practice, not a rule any external source sets.

References.

• Robins, D. & Holmes, J. Aesthetics and credibility in web site design. sciencedirect.com. Identical content in a higher-aesthetic treatment is judged more credible, and the judgement forms within the first seconds. Aesthetics do not improve factual accuracy; a credibility impression is not a sale.