You probably saw already this kind of interaction on YouTube ads. It’s quite simple: after a few seconds in, you can skip the video.

It seems quite effective, given what Bruce Daisley, sales director of YouTube and display at Google, said:

According to YouTube, for standard pre-roll (no choice to skip), users spend 48% of time highly engaged with the ad content.
For skippable pre-rolls (choice to skip) that have been viewed through, users spend 85% of time highly engaged with the ad content, resulting in 75% more engagement when the choice to skip is offered.

This is very relevant, because it tells us a lot how a simple interaction can influence behaviour. My thinking is that to skip an ad you have to recognize it and you have to actively take an action, something that requires a different attentive status.

But what’s the business perspective? Well, if you are a business seeing that your video is “skipped” isn’t a really good metric, also because given the analysis above, it’s better if they skip. What if, then, we could add the same interaction, but in a way that gives the user the power to tell something to the brand, at the same interaction cost – one click?

The idea could be as simple as this:

As you can see, in both cases you are able to skip the video with one click. But with this second interface, you are able to give an actually useful feedback to the business, something that could translate to some nice actions to improve the advertisement, make it better, less intrusive and at the same time more effective.

With no added interaction costs: one click. :)