Finish Line wanted to let sneakerheads know that we carry the freshest shoes around, so we did a little research and noticed that they spend a lot of time on YouTube looking at shoes. And we realized that was the perfect place to show them where to get the freshest kicks.

Using real-time data, we hijacked their YouTube search terms and showed them just how fresh our shoes were. Introducing the “Skip You” ads. The world’s first ads that skip you.

To create these little 6-second pre-roll ads, we revealed a fake skip ad button and kicked it out of the way right before the viewer could. We featured some of the hottest shoes on the market, which made this highly targeted, yet simple execution, a huge success.

We launched the Skip You campaign in the fall of 2017 as consumers were heading into the busy holiday shopping season. The campaign featured a collection of pre-roll videos featuring the absolute hottest, most hard-to-get sneakers being released that season.

The campaign lived on YouTube as the concept leveraged the widely known “Skip Button” as part of the creative idea. We were able to turn the very common and compulsive behavior to click “skip” as soon as possible and turned it into a clever positive for our brand.

By identifying specific Google search terms, we were able to target our consumers, not just down to sneakerheads, but down to the specific brands and styles they were searching for and then serve up a 6-second pre-roll ad customized perfectly for their sneaker needs. We also deployed videos featuring specific shoes on the launch days for those shoes.

With a calculated video release schedule and by staying on top of every shoe drop we were able to keep the momentum and engagement going throughout the course of the campaign. As the different shoes were released, so were our videos. This helped Finish Line stay relevant and become a go-to source for the coolest shoes during that time.

We also deployed a very calculated, data-backed SEM strategy that helped this campaign reach exactly whom it needed every single time. And because of that, not only did these ads have a 100% view completion rate, but with a 53% brand ad recall lift and a 193% brand interest lift, we received a “Highest Brand Lift Percentage” award from Google.