Definition

A video advertisement that graciously allows viewers to escape after five seconds, forcing advertisers to frontload value or face mass abandonment. Democracy in action, if democracy involved selling you soap.

Example Usage

Our skippable ad has a 78% skip rate, meaning we have exactly five seconds to convince people we're worth their time.

Origin

YouTube TrueView ad format introduced in 2010, pioneering user-controlled ad experiences

Fun Fact

Advertisers only pay for skippable ads when viewers watch 30 seconds or more, making it the rare advertising model where annoying people costs nothing.

Source: YouTube advertising platform and video advertising standards

Related Terms

Advanced

snowmobility

A delightfully meaningless marketing buzzword invented by the snowmobile industry to make their products sound cutting-edge and innovative. It's what happens when corporate types need to describe how well a snowmobile snowmobiles but can't just say "it works good." The vehicular equivalent of saying a phone has great "phonability."

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

account-based marketing

A targeted B2B strategy that treats individual high-value accounts as markets of one, essentially putting all your eggs in a few carefully selected baskets. It's the sniper rifle approach versus the shotgun spray of traditional marketing.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

converting

The holy grail of marketing where you transform casual browsers into paying customers, or skeptics into believers. It's the art of turning window shoppers into wallet openers through a carefully orchestrated dance of persuasion, psychology, and sometimes sheer annoyance. Every marketer's favorite verb and every CFO's favorite metric.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

bikini shot

A data visualization or report that shows just enough information to be tantalizing but hides the important details. Reveals the appealing parts while covering up the ugly truth.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

greenwashing

Marketing yourself as environmentally friendly while your actual practices range from negligible to actively harmful, sustainability theater at its finest. It's slapping a leaf logo on your product while dumping toxic waste out back.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

channel

In marketing, any medium through which you push your message into people's consciousness, whether they asked for it or not. Email, social media, carrier pigeons—if it can transmit your brand's desperate plea for attention, it's a channel. Modern marketers obsess over being "omnichannel," which means annoying customers everywhere simultaneously.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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