The five unskippable seconds of a YouTube ad can feel much longer. Geico embraced the five second challenge with an ad campaign that hooked the viewer in using cliché advertising tactics such as mundane settings, a boring savings message and a huge logo typeface. But the bizarreness with which they front loaded their key message, stating the point that “you can’t skip this ad, because it’s already over”, aroused enough curiosity in the viewer to keep them watching. The ads all unfolded into a funny skit as if the camera had stopped rolling.

The ads proved that a simple message told well is often the most effective, generating 725,000 organic YouTube views on the first day.