Ben Pearson:
Those advertisers will run pre-roll ads which will either be 6, 10, or 15 seconds long, with no mid-roll ads interrupting programming. Quibi is recommending that advertisers program shorter ads for content that lasts between 1-5 minutes and longer ads for content that ranges from 5-7 minutes. Overall, Quibi will run 2.5 minutes of ads for every hour of programming.
I feel like I’ve posted about Quibi more than any other blog at this point. A large part of that is because I think the potential is there if they execute well, mostly because I actually want a service like this in my life. I don’t care much for the idea of their movies coming out in chunks. It’s the shows like The Nod where I feel the most potential is for Quibi.
However, I think the ads are going to be critical to the success. $4.99 for an ad-supported steaming channel is a bit steep. And $7.99 ad-free for a shortform streaming channel seems steep, as well. As a consumer, my suggestion to Quibi would be $2.99 and $5.99. In the mind of the consumer $3 feels almost throw away, to where $5 feels like a commitment. For the ad-free price, I matched Hulu’s ad-supported tier. That baseline feels appropriate to me.
For the actual ads themselves, I really think they need to make strict rules rather than recommendations for the length of ad vs. the length of content being shown. 15 seconds is pretty long to make someone sit for a minute or two video. 1-2 minute videos should have ads with a maximum length of 5 second, 3-6 minutes, 10 seconds, and anything longer, 15 seconds.