Channel 4

Taking Ad Skipping literally with Hotels.com

Hotels.com jumped at the chance to have some fun with Ad-Skipping

The Big Idea

Our aim was to take the online behaviour of skipping VOD ads and create a humorous execution that they wouldn’t forget. Whilst watching the standard copy of the Hotels.com ad, we broke our usual rules and placed a ‘Skip Ad’ button on the screen. Those who clicked the button expecting to skip to their programme instead saw the on-screen creative instantly and seamlessly switch to an exact version where every single person featured was skipping on screen … literally… using a jump-rope. If the viewer clicked again, it switched back to normal copy. This could continue across the whole commercial, with no disruption to the core ad message.

Making it Happen

To make this happen Crispin, Porter + Bogusky had the gruelling task of creating the launch commercial twice. Once as a normal shoot - not a jump-rope in sight, and another in which everyone at every point is skipping in the exact same position. Viewers had lots of fun skipping between the two versions.

The ‘Skip Ad’ was clicked 438k times on All 4
View-through rates were staggeringly high at 98%

The Results

What started as a bit of fun actually resulted in seriously effective campaign! The ‘Skip Ad’ was clicked on a staggering 438k times on All 4 and reached an engagement rate of 34% (the highest engagement rate ever on All 4). To corroborate this, 242k viewers also clicked on the ‘Un-Skip’ button, showing that users were engaging with the creative and viewing both options of the ad.

View-through rates were staggeringly high at 98% and it produced great impact across social media, with viewers loving both the creative as well as the technical execution. The campaign showed that simplicity in execution, although incredibly difficult to pull off, is highly effective – and the campaign ended up striking the perfect tone for Hotels.com to launch their brand advocate, Captain Obvious.