To promote the new season of The Noite (a show hosted by one of Brasil’s most popular comedian), Publicis Brasil came up with a new button on YouTube. For the first time they created a campaign where people could choose between a “Skip Ad” and “Troll this ad” button. This tweak to the YouTube pre-roll ads resulted in 4 times more video views for the campaign.
In global fast-food marketing, the smartest digital work often starts with a blunt truth the audience already feels. Burger King’s take on pre-roll irritation is a clean example of that approach.
Pre-rolls on YouTube are considered as one of the most annoying things on the internet. It is a fact that even Burger King acknowledges, even though they profit enormously from them.
So for their campaign in New Zealand they decided to take a slightly different approach. They created 64 videos that made fun of the annoying pre-rolls and then tailored it to the video that was about to be watched.
The mechanism was contextual creative at scale.
Instead of running one generic pre-roll, Burger King produced a library of short spots designed to match the viewer’s intent. The pre-roll referenced the type of content about to play, making the interruption feel less random and more like a commentary on the moment.
That shift matters because it changes the viewer’s question from “how fast can I skip?” to “what are they going to say about this one?”
Pre-roll is hated because it steals time.
This idea reduced that emotional tax by acknowledging the annoyance and using humor to create alignment with the viewer. When a brand says what people are already thinking, it earns a small amount of trust. Tailoring the message to the next video adds a second reward: relevance.
In other words, it does not remove the interruption. It makes the interruption entertaining enough to tolerate.
The intent was to keep the media advantage of pre-roll while reducing the brand penalty that comes with it.
By turning the format itself into the joke, Burger King aimed to increase watch time, reduce skip reflex, and improve brand sentiment. The audience still gets interrupted. But they feel understood, and that changes how the brand is remembered.
They created 64 pre-roll videos that mocked the annoyance of pre-roll and tailored the message to the video the viewer was about to watch.
A library of contextual creative variants designed to match viewer intent, making the interruption feel relevant and humorous.
Because it aligns the brand with what viewers already feel, reducing irritation and increasing willingness to watch.
Improving attention quality and sentiment while still benefiting from the reach and placement of pre-roll media.
If you cannot remove an interruption, redesign it so the audience gets a payoff. Relevance and humor are two of the fastest payoffs available.
Viewers usually have to twiddle their fingers while counting down the 5 second YouTube pre-roll to the “Skip Ad” button.
So Homecenter Sodimac from Chile along with ad agency MayoDraftfcb created a range of environmental messages that challenged viewers to either skip the ad or skip the behavior. In just one week, over 80,000 people chose to change their behavior.
