Meta
- Total Time Hypothesis: duration > frequency
- The New Skool (doesn’t have a name yet?): frequency > duration
- 6 seconds to hook attention
- 10 seconds to make the brand and product identifiable before you overstay your welcome (unless you’re a weirdo (long live weirdos!))
- 16 seconds to game Meta’s ThruPlay optimization (according to them)
- 20-70 seconds to be a weirdo/storyteller
Sunday Paper: Is It Better To Have Many Short Impressions, Or A Few Long Ones – What Science Says About Advertising Length And Frequency
What is the minimum viable ad length?
It depends! (Classic marketer answer)
Ads need to reach an “identification threshold” — the minimal time to be recognized and spark emotion. Conventional ads do this quickly, while unconventional ones take longer but gain little from extra attention afterward.
How do you apply this?
Typical ads benefit most from more frequent but shorter exposures, whereas atypical ads benefit most from longer exposures (even if it’s less frequent).
Nitty Gritty
This study put two schools of thought in the ring:
🥊
I’m writing this post in real time as I read about the study and results. My gut says the new skool will win. Repeated exposures cause interesting things to happen in the brain. And the sheer volume of daily content exposure suggests one exposure would be washed away in the tide, even if it were of decent duration.
10 (seconds) is the magic number
For the typical ad, this optimum is reached around 10 seconds. Every second after that point does not further help recognition and it actually make the ad less appealing.
Of note: here, ‘typical’ means “follow brand and category conventions.”
Except when it’s not
Longer durations benefited…
ads that dared to stray away from the beaten path and adopt a more atypical approach. By atypical, we mean creative narratively driven ads, surprise ads and ads that did the exact opposite of with the majority of their competitors did. For these types of ads, reaching the optimum threshold of attention took a bit more time.
The brands and products that were embedded in atypical ads were better recognized with each passing second, all the way up to the 70 sec maximum.
I’m guessing Old Spice is the atypical poster child. You know which campaign I’m talking about.
Basically, people need more time to figure out WTF is going on with these ads.
As for liking, the optimum for atypical ads lies between 20 and 30 seconds
6-10-16-20+
This is another data point to add into the how to make a video toolkit.
TL;DR: make your standard video ads 10 seconds long.
Pretty graphs and recommendations at New Neuro Marketing.
TechCrunch shares that a social media tester found:
a “Write with Meta AI” prompt on Instagram that allows people to get AI-generated suggestions for comments to users’ posts.
(This is known as “pulling a LinkedIn”)
Content creation and engagement on social platforms has shrunk as they’ve turned more into entertainment and social sharing platforms.
But they need content and signal to feed algorithms and extend scroll sessions.
Minimize the effort to dopamine release.
How long until a platform delivers real-time content generation and social-style commentary via AI?
Display is dying
Returns on programmatic ad auctions are returning so little, Digiday could not find a source to speak on the record. One anonymous revenue lead at a North American publisher says they’ve seen double-digit CPM decreases across the board in 2025. An executive says online display ads bought through auction in the fall are down as much as 30% compared to 2023’s Q4
AI (and other algorithms) + the growth of retail media (thanks 1st party data) + longstanding wariness around programmatic = growth of more attractive (or hyped) alternatives for marketers
Meta changed the default inventory filter setting to allow ads to deliver alongside all content:
Beginning on February 24, 2025, we’re gradually changing the default setting of inventory filters for in-content ads and Audience Network to expanded
Now would be a good time to check your settings if you’re particular about what content your ads appear within / next to.
via Jon Loomer
Marketers are bystanders.
In the words of Peter Drucker:
The bystander sees things neither actor nor audience notices. Above all, he sees differently from the way actors or audience see. Bystanders reflect, and reflection is a prism rather than a mirror; it refracts.
As a marketer, you operate in this middle space, at a slight remove.
Your job is—to continue the metaphor of actors and audience—to manage the fourth wall. The vital point where performance meets audience and the magic happens (or doesn’t).
Like IBM, Oracle, and Sun before it, Apple seems at risk of moving from innovator to infrastructure—a big player that no longer steers the market but plays a foundational role in enabling the players that do.
Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses
Headset group struggles to find path forward after Vision Pro
Canceled device would have rivaled Meta’s future AR glasses
Confusing themselves for the market and losing track of trends until it’s too late to be an early mover.
The company has risen from the ashes before, can it do it again?
via Bloomberg
Does Meta have its long-desired hardware platform? Or at least the start of it?
It’s extended the contract with the Ray-Ban parent company for more years of smart glasses collaboration.
Now, according to Bloomberg, Oakley is joining the crew.
Plus…
Company resumes work on smartwatch and develops AirPods rival
First real AR glasses, dubbed ‘Artemis,’ are planned for 2027
The question used to be: what will replace the smartphone?
But the path now seems to be to replace the interface and turn the smartphone into a personal, portable server for ambient computing peripherals and AI features.
the organizing principle of digital advertising, which is the individual consumer. What Facebook — now Meta — is better at than anyone in the world is understanding consumers not as members of a cohort or demographic group but rather as individuals, and serving them ads that are uniquely interesting to them.
brands are created for cohorts or demographic groups, because they need to be manufactured at scale;
thus the opportunity for an entirely new wave of companies that were built around digital advertising and its deep personalization from the get-go.
from Ben Thompson
From the abstract of the paper Do Influencers Influence? A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Celebrities and Social Media Influencers Effects 📝
Findings reveal that social media influencers (SMIs) are more effective than brand-only advertising and that there is no significant difference between SMIs and celebrity endorsers. Taking these factors into consideration, the effects are moderated by perceived credibility and influencer types, indicating that mega-influencers are relatively more persuasive, while nano-influencers are less persuasive compared to celebrities, respectively. Findings imply that there is a “sweet spot” wherein SMIs are most effective and distinct from celebrity endorsers, providing support for more nuanced conceptualizations of SMIs and calling for future research to explore additional enhancing and attenuating factors.
2025: The Year of AR?
Sources told the Financial Times that Meta is planning to expand its partnership with Ray-Ban to make glasses with a little display on the inside, so users can gaze out at the world with a digital overlayThe sources said Meta wants to add a screen on the inside of the glasses that would be able to flash things like text messages, and that the product might be ready to hit the shelves as early as the second half of next year.
On-lens optics is the next big step.
From Platformer’s 2025 predictions:
Everyone copies Meta Ray-Bans. The other tech giants come around to the idea that glasses, not headsets, are what will turn mixed-reality applications into a mainstream success. By the end of the year, consumers will have multiple good Meta Ray-Ban alternatives to choose from.
Agreed.
Meta now sets 1-day engaged-view by default in a campaign’s attribution setting.
Jon Loomer also reports this attribution type has been updated to be click agnostic.
Just an FYI, I wouldn’t bother changing this unless you only want click attribution (which I’m not sure is the best route these days).
😎😎😎
Meta plans to add displays to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as next year, as the US tech giant accelerates its plans to build lightweight headsets that can usurp the smartphone as consumers’ main computing device.
According to people familiar with the matter, the company has accelerated Orion’s development following the enthusiastic response of early testers.
The next form factor has been decided.
Ambient computing is coming.
via the Financial Times
from @Manton: I support the mad king
take any other potential feature and run it through the feedback of an oversight committee, the outcome is the same. Bloat.
Directionless products fail. They lose their soul.
Committees replace the initial energy that drive a company.
Look at Meta compared to the other big tech companies. Regardless of your feelings towards Zuck, you can’t deny the different vibe compared to a company like Apple.
Extend it to other Magnificent 7 members NVIDIA and Tesla (I know, I know) and the trend is clear.
Meta is forecast to continue its shift to being an Instagram company in the near term:
Instagram Expected to Generate 50% of Meta’s US Ad Sales in 2025
And, of course, The Gram is a video platform now.
How to Make a Video According to TikTok (Shop)
First Meta, then LinkedIn, now video making tips from TikTok (Shop).
You Gotta Have a Hook
You have to pique curiosity within the first 3 seconds. The first line must grab attention.
Bennies, Baby
Once attention is grabbed, move into the benefits / variations of your product.
Heed the Call
End with a call to action and make it easy to take the relevant action (aka don’t just dump them on your homepage).
create short videos that capture attention, clearly deliver a brand or product message, and convert.
To recap:
1. Capture attention in the opening seconds
2. Validate the product
3. Give a clear next step (CTA)
Everyone’s coming for Meta 😎
Solos challenges Meta’s Ray-Bans with $299 ChatGPT smart glasses
That allows the AirGo Vision to do things like translate text into different languages, provide directions to nearby locations or landmarks, and give the wearer more information about what they’re looking at.
A swappable frame system means that you can wear the glasses with or without the camera
To paraphrase Ian Fleming: Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a trend.
A good economic rebuttal to some of the requested punishments in the Google anti-trust case.
Defaults matter, but switching also isn’t hard.
Also, it’s a bit late, isn’t it?
the antitrust case is happening when Google is losing advertising share and is under pressure from a new search technology, Artificial Intelligence. AI search from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Llama, and xAI is very well funded and making rapid progress.
The game of “take control, give control” continues, this time with Meta giving advertisers another lever to control their ad delivery
Frequency controls help you control how often your ad is shown to a person. When creating your campaign, you’ll have two options to choose from for your frequency controls. These controls are target frequency and frequency cap.
Now you can better control frequency of awareness and engagement campaigns, at least for Reach and ThruPlay goals.
Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses to rival Meta’s Ray Bans to be released late next year.
Gemini would handle AI tasks alongside support for “payment,” QR code recognition, “gesture recognition,” and “human recognition functions.”
I think we’ve found the most probable next consumer computing platform.
AI needs a computer, but not necessarily a screen.
The era of ambient computing is upon us.