Title	SKIP AD
Brand	HOTELS.COM
Product/Service	ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCY
Category	A11. Digital & Mobile Brand Experience
Entrant	CRISPIN PORTER & BOGUSKY London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	CRISPIN PORTER & BOGUSKY London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement	CHANNEL 4 London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	SMUGGLER London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
David Carr	Crispin Porter + Bogusky	Creative
Martins Millers	Crispin Porter + Bogusky	Creative
Dave Buonaguidi	Crispin Porter + Bogusky	Chief Creative Officer

The Campaign

“People don’t want to watch ads online, so they don’t… they skip them” – Captain Obvious   Ignoring a commercial online has never been easier. All the viewer has to do is press ‘skip ad’. Hotels.com wanted to stand out within the OTA category, with an innovative but contextually relevant execution that would break-through the digital video clutter. With the help of Channel 4, we changed the role of the skip button and got Captain Obvious to skip the ad instead… literally… using a jump-rope.

Creative Execution

We filmed our launch commercial twice. One like normal, with no jump-rope in sight. And another in which everyone is skipping. So when the viewer was served our ad on Channel 4’s VOD platform and pressed ‘skip ad’, the video switched seamlessly to our skipping version of the ad. They could also un-skip too. Turning the button you press to ignore an ad, into the button you press to engage.

In the first week, the ‘Skip Ad’ collected more than 400,000 impressions on the Channel 4 video-on-demand channel and reached an engagement rate of 34%, which was the highest engagement rate that Channel 4 had seen for any type of interactive video. Overall ‘Skip Ad’ was skipped 242k times. Well that’s just because they hated the ad and wanted to get their content we hear you cry. Well the good news is that over 200k viewers clicked on the ‘Un Skip’ button showing us that users were engaging with the creative and viewing both options of the ad. If that wasn’t enough, view-through rates were staggeringly high at 98% and viewers really seemed to enjoy it on social media, with users loving both the creative and the technical execution as well.

The skip ad is clearly designed to live in culture. Not only does it give a new meaning to ‘skip an ad’ but surprises users with its Obvious nature and humorous execution. Quite literally, the ad is un-skippable but many users that clicked skip ad, then clicked Unskip which shows the success we had in connecting with consumers in a new way.

Tasked with introducing Hotels.com number one fan, the now familiar character in the US, Captain Obvious on British soil we needed to land his penchant for all things Obvious. With Hotels.com being the obvious choice for booking a hotel online, the series of ads took a very literal take on the very British phrases and words with dual meaning. Therefore, it would not be out of the question that when users chose to skip the ad on Channel4 video-on-demand, Captain Obvious thought they would prefer to see him and his cast quite literally skipping through the 30’ spot.