Make an ad long enough to prove the product and good enough that people choose to keep watching, and bid so you pay mostly for the people who do.
In 2016 Purple, the mattress company, hired Harmon Brothers to make a long-form ad around a "Goldilocks" egg test: raw eggs on a Purple mattress that stay intact. Run on YouTube, it drew about 53 million views (AdExchanger, 24 July 2017).
Purple's chief marketing officer, Alex McArthur, described an average watch time of around two minutes on a four-minute video as four times the competitors' average, and said customers who watched a video on Purple's site were four times as likely to buy (AdExchanger, 24 July 2017). Net revenue grew from $65.5 million in 2016 to $196.9 million in 2017 (company results). No source ties that growth to the ad alone.
Products whose advantage can be shown on camera: consumer goods, home, fitness, tools, and software with a visible before and after.
With cost-per-view bidding on YouTube's skippable in-stream ads, you pay only when someone watches 30 seconds, or the whole ad if it is shorter, or interacts with it. A long ad that entertains filters the audience for you: the people still watching at minute three are your likeliest buyers.
Harmon Brothers had done it before for Squatty Potty, whose online sales were up about 600% by the end of January 2016 (Utah Business, May 2016). B2B can use the format at lower budgets: in an A/B test, adding Video Action campaigns to skippable in-stream ads cut Semrush's cost per sign-up by 51% (Google case study, January 2022).
Reported. Purple's figures from its CMO (AdExchanger, July 2017) and company results. Vendor. Semrush from a Google case study.
Cost to test. Production is the big cost: a simple demo can be filmed for a few thousand dollars, while Purple's was reported in the hundreds of thousands (Utah Business, 27 October 2016). Test media can start under $1,000.
Kill it if average watch time is under 30 seconds, or no sales follow after two recuts.
The demo has to be true and repeatable: a staged result breaches advertising rules. Most products have no egg test, so find the version that is honest for yours. A long ad needs a comedy writer's script, not a corporate one.
The Founder Video, Affiliates Feed the Ads, The Free Tool
A 30-minute call first. If it fits, two calls in one week and a written growth plan you keep.