GEICO makes more crafty preroll ads

Ad Nut can't explain this campaign any better than the Campaign US Ad Nuts already have:

The Martin Agency has once again figured out a clever way to make preroll ads, one of the most hated forms of advertising, interesting. Last year, the agency’s award-winning "Unskippable" Geico campaign kept viewers from hitting the skip button with preroll ads that appeared to jump immediately to the end, but kept going. Now the agency hopes to grab attention with unskippable ads that fast-forward to the end, but make you want to see more.

The video window below is a playlist, which proceeds through four different episodes in the series ('Hike', 'Lake', 'Forest' and 'Going up'). For each pair, you'll first see a 15-second preroll ad, and then the longer version meant for curious viewers who click through.

Ad Nut likes the quirky stories and admits to being drawn in by the 'How did that happen?' question. Time (and mouse fingers) will tell whether this new approach proves as effective as last year's 'unskippable' series. Ad nut particular admires 'Family' from that series (below). Even though it contains one of those murderous beasts known as dogs, Ad Nut likes it because the heroically straight-faced performances by the human actors are truly impressive. According to the Campaign US article, which you should read, the ad also performed impressively:

The "Unskippable" campaign not only won industry accolades—it was the Gunn Report’s second most awarded digital campaign last year—but it was also effective. While the agency’s research showed 96 percent of preroll ads are skipped after 5 seconds, the average viewing time for the "Unskippable" ads was more than 30 seconds, and "Family" was one of the Geico’s most highly shared ads of all time.