As an advertiser, it’s never been harder for you to capture and retain your audience’s attention.
Research from the University of California, Irvine and Microsoft reveals that back in 2004, people spent an average of 2.5 minutes looking at any given screen before heading elsewhere. Today, this figure has dropped to just 47 seconds.
All of which means that if you’re going to engage potential customers and compel them to take action, you’d better grab their attention fast.
How long, exactly, do you have to capture attention with ads?
Okay, so we humans struggle to focus on a single web page for more than 47 seconds. That’s less time than it takes for the vocals to kick in at the start of In The Air Tonight (trust me, I just checked).
More concerningly, this figure is at the more generous end of the spectrum, as these stats demonstrate:
- Nielsen Norman Group found there’s an extremely high chance of users leaving a web page in the first 10 – 20 seconds
- WARC says people only spend 1.7 seconds deciding whether to engage with social media content
Then there’s a separate survey in which 65.9 percent of respondents admitted they always skip in-app video ads if there’s the option to do so after a certain time period, while just 19.7 percent said they don’t skip ads that are relevant to them.

What’s more, a study for the International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication found that about half of people believe YouTube’s five-second non-skippable ad duration is fair, but that they skip ads as soon as they get the chance. Some respondents even wanted the option to skip sooner.
Given that people are apparently desperate to hit the “skip” button, many brands have responded by cramming their logo into the opening five seconds.
That way, even if the viewer skips your ad, they’ll still remember your brand name. Makes sense, right?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Google discovered that while ads featuring the brand in the first five seconds perform better for brand awareness and recall, they’re also more likely to be skipped.
Sheesh.
None of which gives us a definitive answer to the question: “Exactly how long do you have to grab attention with display ads?”
But it’s clear that we’re likely talking about a matter of seconds here. So the earlier you pique your viewer’s interest, the better.
7 display ads that grab attention early
Okay, so we know that we only have a few seconds to hook our audience.
And we also know that displaying your logo in the opening seconds of your video will have people sprinting for the “skip” button.
So what do high-performing, attention-grabbing display ads actually look like?
To answer that question, we used Adbeat’s competitive intelligence tools to identify high-spending US video ads from the last six months, then analyze what makes them so effective. Here are the examples we found, along with our key learnings for each ad:
Example 1: Curology: Show, don’t tell
Cosmetics brands love dazzling us with complex-sounding ingredients.
But the thing is, customers don’t really care if a product contains liposomes or beta hydroxy acids. They just want to know it’ll achieve positive results.
That’s why Curology gets straight to demonstrating the “transformative” effects of its skincare products. And they don’t just tell us how well it works — they show us with before-and-after images:
Impressively, they cram all this messaging into a six-second video. And it’s evidently working because they spent an estimated $17.9 million promoting this ad from mid-December 2023 to mid-March this year.
Example 2: TaxAct: Add on-screen text (early)
If you’re going to keep people watching your video ad, you need to get them engaged straight away.
One way to achieve this is to add striking copy at the start of your video, just like in this example from tax software platform TaxAct:
The bold white text stands out against the purple background, which draws the eye and naturally encourages viewers to start reading. And because the copy is in sentence case (i.e. only the first word in the sentence starts with a capital letter), it’s both easier to read and friendlier.
In fact, the whole tone of this ad — from the light, bleepy-bloopy soundtrack to the voiceover to the CTA — comes across as friendly and unintimidating.
That’s a big deal for a brand like TaxAct, given that over half of Gen Z and two-fifths of Millennials say they’ve been brought to tears by tax-related stress.
👉 Learn more: We lift the lid on the ad secrets of top tax platforms in our article: The battle of Tax Day: Analyzing TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxAct’s display ad strategies.
Example 3: Safelite: Tell a story
Consumers love an engaging narrative, with 94 percent agreeing that “good content tells a story”.
Safelite uses this knowledge to their advantage by telling a simple story in this 15-second video ad:
It starts by introducing the “characters”. Then it shows the “problem” they’re facing — as you probably guessed, it’s a cracked windshield. And finally, we’re presented with the “solution”: Safelite’s free mobile service.
This tried-and-trusted storytelling arc is highly engaging. Indeed, a study published in the Journal of Business Research declared that:
“Story plot, characters, and verisimilitude trigger consumer engagement by activating cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses in a certain sequence.”
Example 4: Kiehl’s: Use tight framing
Popups. Multiple tabs. Links to dozens of other content recommendations. The online world is full of distractions, which makes it more difficult to grab and hold your audience’s attention.
One solution is to keep viewers focused by using super-tight framing, just like in this Kiehl’s ad:
With tighter framing, there’s less chance of people looking at what’s going on in the background of your video, which means they’re more likely to concentrate on your core messaging.
Example 5: Floor & Decor: Add eye-catching visuals
Wouldn’t it be useful if we knew what makes viewers likely to keep watching ads?
Turns out we do. Research shows that 69 percent of consumers won’t skip ads for products or services they’re already interested in. Unfortunately, that’s not much use for any brand that isn’t a household name.
More helpfully, the same survey reveals that over half of viewers don’t skip ads that are visually interesting. Use this to your advantage by adding eye-catching visuals at the start of your video, just like Floor & Decor does here:
Once you’ve reeled the viewer in with some eye candy, there’s a decent chance they’ll stick around to watch the rest of your ad.
Example 6: Zenith Prep Academy: Trigger serious emotions
Every advertiser wants to spark some kind of emotional reaction from their audience. But which emotions should you be targeting?
Research from the BBC analyzed ad campaigns from global brands like HSBC, Huawei, and AIG. They discovered that triggering serious emotions — like puzzlement, fear, and sadness — leads consumers to develop a deeper subconscious relationship with the brand in question. What’s more, those emotions increased positive sentiment toward the brand by 35 percent on average.
Zenith Prep Academy shows us how leveraging these sorts of emotions can help us create more engaging ads:
This ad triggers a feeling of fear: that the parent’s child might miss out on a top-ranking university placement. Then it goes on to explain that Zenith can help overcome this challenge, leaving viewers with a positive outcome.
Example 7: Liberty Mutual: Make it funny!
Humor is a tricky issue for advertisers.
For starters, it’s subjective. Not everyone finds the same things funny, so you risk alienating a chunk of your audience. Plus you could even end up offending potential customers, which is definitely a bad thing.
All of which explains why there’s been a marked downturn in humor in digital video ads in recent years, according to Kantar:
But if you get it right, the rewards can be significant. Kantar analyzed consumer ad reactions and discovered that humor was the #1 factor that stopped viewers skipping ads in 30 of the 42 countries studied.
In other words: if you can tickle your audience’s funny bone, chances are they’ll watch your ad in full.
Liberty Mutual takes this advice onboard in this video ad:
Sure, it might not be laugh-out-loud funny. But the comedic tone of voice and slight hint of farce are amusing enough to make you stick around until the end.
Conclusion: Want to create attention-grabbing ads? Start by considering your audience
As you can see, there are plenty of tactics you can employ to capture attention from the first second of your video ads. But if you’re going to create ads that work for your brand, you need to start by thinking about what your audience wants to see.
For example, we know humor can be super effective. But if you’re launching a campaign spanning multiple markets, it’ll be tough to find a single message or theme that’s funny to everyone.
Once you understand your audience, it’s far easier to figure out which attention-grabbing strategies are most likely to resonate.
Want to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here.