Tuesday morning, June 16th 2026, my wife stepped outside on the back porch deck and snapped this photo of two juvenile bears snacking on my bird feeders in my front yard. I'm pretty sure that mama bear was somewhere nearby in the woods.
Suffice to say, after this 2nd visitation in the span of one calendar month, has caused the following things to happen: my neighbor from across the street is now upset with me for bringing bears into the neighborhood (note, we've had an uptick in bear sightings in my town this year) and I had to relocate my bird-feeders to the (fenced in) backyard, where the bears (hopefully) will not get to them.
Commercials are the bane of our digital existence. Love them or loathe them, you can never truly get away from them, no matter what platform you use.
Television? While there are some good ones, most offer the stimulant needed for channel surfing. Gaming apps? 100% unavoidable, and they're one of the few platforms that can hold you hostage until they're done showing. YouTube? There are infomercials that you can definitely skip, but the six to fifteen second commercials are the master class of memorable advertising.
I know this because I'm one of those frugal souls who epitomizes the old "beggars can't be choosers" axiom, because I don't want to drop around $12.99 per month for ad free videos. Yes, I'm on YouTube nearly six total hours per day, but I'm not going to spend money unwisely.
There are times where I automatically skip the fifteen second commercials, simply because the product doesn't interest me (cancer meds, anyone?), but there are times where I'm intrigued enough to watch the entire fifteen second ad (and the occasional thirty second ad/movie trailer), even though I will never use the product/see the movie.
Let me give you a good example of memorable advertising. Apartment-dot-com has a memorable set of six second ads featuring Jeff Goldblum stating if you advertise on the website, you will have people crawling out of the woodwork to look at your property. Those people who come crawling out of the woodwork, so far include:
- someone masquerading as a raincoat hanging on the corner of a door;
- someone appearing primed for action after one of the closet beds springs open;
- someone masquerading as a standalone bathroom sink.
Jarring? Absolutely. Effectively getting your attention? Absolutely. Is it getting extra eyeballs to the website? Probably.
It's funny how people's viewing habits have changed over the decades. Back in the day, you had people regularly glued to various t.v. and cable t.v. channels, so you could (mostly) justify spending your hard earned money on fifteen to thirty second commercials.
But now, with viewership so incredibly splintered digitally (regular t.v., streaming platforms and even YouTube), you have to go where people are now congregating. On the upside, on digital platforms, your advertising dollars can be stretched a little further than normal. On the downside, you have to make damn sure that your six to fifteen second commercial is memorable enough not to be ignored/skipped by those eyeballs you're trying to lasso in.
And I mean memorable in a good way. Raising Cain has new six second commercials that make absolutely no sense: a guy yelling at an employee for telling them to "eat it"; a well known gardening company featuring Martha Stewart pouring a bag of potted soil into a large pot while saying, "I'm a dirt nerd." Like, what?
The only reason why I remember these two examples, as well as countless others, is that they were exactly six seconds in length, so you had no choice but to watch them. At my age (61) and viewing habits (no television/streaming platforms beyond YouTube since 2019), this is what my short attention span can handle now.
And that's a good thing, because advertisers are coming to the ugly realization that the average consumer has the attention span of a gnat, so they got exactly six-to-seven seconds to get their point across in a way that sticks with them days/weeks/months from now.
I just wish that the professional sports would learn that lesson, especially when you have a 40 minute MLB pregame show, which is at most seventeen minutes that's actually related to the fame, with the remaining time related to advertising.
Have a fantastic Monday or whatever day you happen to be reading this on.
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