Why You Should Take Advantage of Pre-Roll Advertisements

I’ve seen firsthand how video ads show up everywhere, whether it’s a post-roll or pre-roll spot while you’re watching your favorite content.

For marketers, those video ads are not just interruptions but new opportunities to reach and engage consumers in this rapidly evolving video ecosystem.

While traditional TV still dominates ad revenue, digital video is the fastest-growing format by consumption, and I’ve noticed more brands shifting their budget in this direction.

If you’ve been a YouTube addict, you may have seen ads almost as often as the videos themselves.

A common one is the ad that plays before your chosen video with a “Skip Ad” button after five short seconds.

That’s what you call a pre-roll advertisement.

At Breadnbeyond, we’ve helped clients make the most of those precious first seconds to grab attention with animation.

Now, we’re going to dive even deeper…

What’s the Difference Between Pre-Roll and Post-Roll Ads?

Pre-roll ads have gained more traction from brand marketers because they boost key metrics like engagement and purchase intent.

I’ve seen them work especially well on platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Vimeo, where the audience’s attention is still fresh.

The main distinction is timing:

Pre-roll ads play before the video content the user has selected. Viewers are more likely to notice them because they’re waiting for the main video to start.
Post-roll ads appear after the video ends. From my experience, they’re often overlooked since viewers tend to click away once the content they came for is finished.

That’s why pre-roll ads usually deliver better results. When done right, pre-roll ads can be a goldmine for digital marketing.

The Benefits Of Pre-Roll Advertisements

In this digital world where endless content seems available at your fingertips, businesses leave no stone unturned to get their messages heard among the noise.

And pre-roll ads are one of the best in their class.

After years of being seen as an emerging tactic, pre-roll ads have firmly made it to the mainstream.

Here are some salivating benefits that you’re going to reap once you tap into the pre-roll ads bandwagon:

Brand Awareness

If your target customers don’t even know that your brand exists, the likelihood that they’ll invest in your brand is slim to none. In this matter, pre-roll ads got you covered.

Since it appears before the selected video content for at least five seconds before the viewer can skip it, there’s typically a huge opportunity for your brand to get exposed, even for a few seconds.

This exposure then boosts the brand’s online visibility, which turns an obscure product into a viable option for purchase.

Purchase Decision

Often, customers first hear about the brand they’re going to purchase through social networks (like Twitter or Instagram) or TV.

After viewing your pre-roll video ads, they become more intrigued to learn about your brand and make a purchase.

What’s more interesting is that Millennials are most likely to trust pre-roll video ads (compared to any other video ads), with 57% of them claiming that these kinds of ads effectively build their trust when considering a purchase decision.

Brand Engagement

By connecting pre-roll advertising to content based on your potential customers’ interests, you can seamlessly improve your chances for engagement.

A compelling pre-roll ad is supposed to spark the viewers’ interest in a brand instead of convincing them too hard to purchase.

So, once you are successful in getting them attracted to the ad from the get-go, they’ll undoubtedly watch the entire ad and continue to interact further with your brand.

That’s how you keep them engaged.

Also read: Create Audience Engagement to Get More Conversions With Videos

Brand Favorability

Using pre-roll ads as part of your marketing strategy allows the viewers to feel more confident about purchasing your products or services. That’s why this kind of ad can improve your brand’s favorability.

A well-crafted pre-roll ad also makes it easier for viewers to remember and recall your ads or your brand.

And if you’re lucky enough, they can tell their family and friends about your brand.

Lead Generation

One of the many reasons that make pre-roll ads powerful is their ability to deliver your story to a target audience.

Therefore, it’s so convenient for lead generation.

You can customize your target audience with pre-roll ads by their interest, age, gender, location, and more.

With specific demographics in mind, your digital advertising campaign becomes much more targeted and effective in driving more customers into the lead generation funnel.

Three Types of Pre-Roll Advertisements

Now that you know some of the perks of using pre-roll ads, we’re jumping into different types.

So, there are three main types of pre-roll ads that most marketers use to leverage their video marketing or digital advertising efforts:

Skippable Pre-Roll Ads

Let’s start with the most common one: the skippable pre-roll ads.

This type of pre-roll ad allows the viewers to skip after 5 seconds once they click on the video content.

So, the viewer can decide whether they want to watch the entire ad or just skip it over.

From my experience, brands that use a strong hook in those first few seconds, whether it’s an intriguing question or a bold visual, see much better engagement.

Non-Skippable Pre-Roll Ads

The opposite of the skippable ones, this type of pre-roll ad can not be skipped.

The viewers have no choice but to watch the entire ad before they can enjoy the video content.

The usual length for this non-skippable ad is 15 to 20 seconds.

It’s highly popular among prominent brands and national advertisers.

We’ve worked with clients who used this format to guarantee exposure for product launches and saw a strong lift in brand recall.

Bumper Pre-Roll Ads

Bumper ads are short, unskippable clips, usually six seconds long.

They’re designed for quick, memorable impressions and can be managed directly through Google Ads as an add-on to a TrueView campaign.

I’ve found they work best when paired with longer ad formats in a broader strategy.

Characteristics of A Good Pre-Roll Ad

Just like any other component in a digital marketing strategy, pre-roll ads are quite tricky.

They can only bore and disturb your viewers if it’s created poorly. However, they can be wonderfully effective when properly executed.

Now, the question is: how do you make a pre-roll ad that works?

Here are some key characteristics I’ve seen make the biggest difference:

Concise and Balanced

Since pre-roll ads are less than a minute, the message you put into them should be brief and balanced.

The first five seconds should be able to get the message across to the viewers.

In my experience, highlighting the viewer’s pain points right away is one of the best ways to keep them watching instead of skipping.

That way, you can catch their attention from the get-go and convince them to keep watching the ad all the way through.

Creative and Compelling

Just in case you don’t realize yet: viewers are way too familiar with pre-roll ads, so they are only tempted to watch the unique and compelling ones- and of course, skip the mediocre advertisements.

In this matter, you need to come up with out-of-the-box ideas to create a thumb-stopping pre-roll ad.

At Breadnbeyond, we’ve learned that ads with an unexpected twist, bold visuals, or curiosity-driven storytelling perform far better than “safe” or generic ones.

At the end of the day, creativity is what makes a pre-roll thumb-stopping.

Provides Value

Here comes the harsh truth: your viewers don’t care about what products or services you try to sell; they only care about the information that benefits them.

It’s crucial to create a pre-roll ad that provides real value to the viewers.

Providing useful information also shows that your business cares for and appreciates customers.

When I work with clients, I always push to front-load this value in the first few seconds to keep viewers engaged and hang around for the entire ad.

Landing Page

Let’s say you’re successful enough to get the viewers to watch the entire pre-roll ad, but they don’t take any action to accomplish your marketing goal. Pointless, isn’t it?

That’s why you need to put a landing page or a clear call to action to help them seamlessly move to the next buyer journey.

With both a landing page and a call-to-action, you allow viewers to learn more about the offer and tell them what to do next after watching the ad.

Also read: How a Landing Page Video Will Help Your Conversion Rates

Proper Targeting and Retargeting

Appropriate targeting and retargeting options should be observed for the following.

It’s essential to tailor or adjust the pre-roll advertisement to your target audience.

In other words, leveraging targeting and retargeting options helps you to run the pre-roll ads to viewers who really care or are excited to see them.

That way, it makes your pre-roll more productive, which in turn brings more customers sliding through your sales funnel.

Depending on the campaign, I’ve helped clients refine their ads based on:

Location. It targets the viewers based on their country, region, or city. This option helps you focus your pre-roll advertising on the areas where you’ll find the right customers.
Demographics. It targets the viewers based on their age, gender, occupation, or household income. For instance, if the pre-roll ad is about cosmetic products, demographic targeting could help you to roll out your ads mostly to women viewers.
Interests. It targets viewers who typically watch videos on a specific topic, even if they’re currently watching something else.
Topics. It helps you reach a broader range of viewers who are intrigued by the topics you select. This option also allows your ad to play before the video content that has the same topic.
Language. It offers you an opportunity to target viewers who speak the same language as the one used in your ads.

Read more about the handy, actionable tips in creating a compelling pre-roll ad at: How to Make a Video Go Viral — 5 Tips for Brand Exposure

Platforms for Pre-Roll Advertisements

As I mentioned before, you can create your pre-roll ad and place it on social networks as their platforms.

In this case, each platform has its own “policy” toward the placement of pre-roll ads.

Make sure you understand them so you can design the ads that fit each platform.

YouTube

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YouTube is probably the first thing that comes to your mind when it comes to pre-roll ads.

As the most popular video-sharing platform and the world’s second-largest search engine, YouTube has become a “main channel” for marketers out there to place their pre-roll ads.

YouTube offers 6 to 30-second-long pre-roll ads that will be displayed directly in video player windows.

That means that it’ll fill the entire window instead of banner ads at the bottom like overlay ads.

Facebook

This platform once banned pre-roll ads since the company wanted to focus only on a convenient, uninterrupted user experience.

However, as pre-roll ads began to rise above the clutter and the company needed to keep pace with its rivals, such as YouTube, the platform finally released pre-roll ads in January 2018.

Facebook limits its pre-roll advertisements to 6 seconds.

It’ll appear when a user intentionally seeks out specific videos, like search results or on a Page timeline.

Twitter

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Similar to YouTube, Twitter allows you to run 6-second to 30-second long pre-roll ads with the skip option.

It’ll be displayed in silent auto-play mode on premium publisher videos wherever the videos appear in a user’s timeline, profiles, and search.

This pre-roll ad feature was once only available to all advertisers in the USA market.

But now, it has expanded to 12 markets, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Vimeo

Vimeo keeps advertising to a minimum for the users to create a beautiful and clean site.

That’s why it doesn’t have direct video ad features, like pre-roll, post-roll, and overlay ads.

Since Vimeo doesn’t support the format of pre-roll ads, the only way to run them on this platform is through a third-party player.

You can embed code or insert the third-party links to the video ad and make it a pre-roll ad on Vimeo.

Additional Tips For Your Video Campaign

It’s no longer a debate: without video, even the most well-planned marketing campaign won’t reach its full potential.

Over the years, I’ve seen businesses leave a lot of opportunities on the table simply because video wasn’t part of their strategy.

Here are a few additional tips I recommend for optimizing your video marketing campaigns and getting the most out of your pre-roll ads:

Keep It Short and Sweet. Your viewers are busy. They want quick, straightforward video content that solves their problem. I’ve found that short, concise videos with a sharp hook almost always perform better than long ones that try to cover everything.

Don’t Skimp on the Equipment. One of the most common mistakes I see is cutting corners on production. Sound, visuals, and script quality make or break how viewers perceive your brand. A well-produced video directly impacts recall and trust.

Use Different Types of Video. Not all videos serve the same purpose. A single video can’t effectively cover every marketing objective. That’s why we encourage clients to match each format to a specific goal, for example:

Explainer videos for simplifying complex ideas.
Product videos for showing features in action.
Live streams for engagement and authenticity.

Crafting the right video for the right purpose ensures the message is clear and the call-to-action resonates.

Takeaway: Pre Roll Ads Targets The Right Audience

As part of a video marketing campaign, pre-roll video ads are powerful for reaching and engaging your target customers in a more cost-effective way.

Pre-roll ads target the right audience by interest, online behavior, location, topics, and keywords.

Since it appears at the beginning of the video before viewers watch their desired content, they have the option to skip it.

What makes this kind of ad even more fascinating is that it creates a better video environment since it does not force viewers to watch the ad.

Mini FAQs on Pre Roll Ads

1. What exactly is a pre-roll ad?

A pre-roll ad is a short video ad that plays before the video content a user has chosen to watch. The most common type is skippable, where viewers can skip after five seconds, but there are also non-skippable and bumper formats.

2. Are pre-roll ads effective?

Yes—when done right. In my experience, pre-roll ads can significantly boost brand awareness, engagement, and even purchase intent. The key is to capture attention in the first few seconds with a clear, creative, and valuable message.

3. How long should a pre-roll ad be?

It depends on the format. Skippable pre-rolls can run longer but need a strong hook in the first five seconds. Non-skippable ads are usually 15–20 seconds. Bumper ads are short and unskippable, just six seconds long.

4. What makes a good pre-roll ad?

From working with clients at Breadnbeyond, I’d say the best pre-roll ads share five traits: they’re concise, creative, valuable, supported by a clear call-to-action, and targeted to the right audience.

5. How do I measure the success of my pre-roll ads?

The main metrics I recommend tracking are view-through rate (how many people watched without skipping), click-through rate, brand recall, and conversion rate. Together, they give a clear picture of whether your ad is just being watched or actually driving results.

Let your audience engage with your brand with a pre-roll advertisement.

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