Duration: 2:45

166 views

1

15-second countdown ads could be the new k.iller format.
Luxury Italian retailer Yoox has announced it is running an exciting new type of pre-roll ad on YouTube: 15-second buy-it-or-lose-it offers. The company will be runnign the ads until mid-December in a few regions globally.

The ads are 15-second countdowns featuring a unique product, so. The user has to make a decision to buy on the spot or they will lose out and the item will be offered to someone else. Even if they go looking for it later, they won’t be able to find the product on the Yoox website, as it will have been exclusive to the pre-roll ad. To add to the tension, the creative depicts impending threats to the product to bring the countdown to life, so the ad positions the item as needing “saving” from dangers such as laser beams creeping towards it.



This is an interesting tactic from the retailer, and one that makes a lot of sense from a behavioral perspective. It takes advantage of the scarcity heuristic — the notion that people are likely to perceive something as more valuable if it is hard to obtain, whether that’s down to a restricted quantity or time to purchase. Here, Yoox, Google, and Stink Studios, who worked on the ads together, are using time as the forceful factor.