Snapchat To Follow YouTube With Unskippable, Six-Second Ads

Snapchat’s latest money-making plan, besides offering users water-resistant camera glasses, is Commercials.

“Commericals” is the literal name for the social platform’s advertising initiative in which it will test unskippable, six-second branded spots, as first reported by Digiday. The ads will play with certain Snapchat Shows produced by the likes of Viacom and NBCUniversal, but they won’t show up alongside Discover content nor will they appear with your friends’ Stories.

Test ads aren’t expected to begin until close to May 15, according to Digiday‘s report. Since they’re running alongside Snapchat’s high production quality Shows, it’s likely that the Commercials will appear equally polished.

Snapchat’s move follows in the advertising footsteps of both FOX and YouTube. The former announced that it would adopt the six-second ad format on its online and on-demand platforms, and even potentially on TV, back in June 2017. Of course, that came after Google-owned YouTube had been showing six-second ads, which the company calls “bumpers,” for about a year to measurable success.

These short, unskipppable ads, according to Google’s research, led to a “significant lift” in brand awareness 70% of the time they were used on YouTube. In terms of brand/product recall, “bumpers” performed 30% better than other types of video advertisements on the platform.

YouTube’s success with the format bodes well for Snapchat, which has been struggling to meet its financial goals and has taken a hit to its public image as of late. On the other hand, most users expressed distaste for its recent redesign, and a redesign of that redesign didn’t seem to help matters either, as Snap’s stock continued to go down. Snapchat’s users may not be amenable to yet another change on the social platform by the time the test ads debut.