Perfecting the pre-roll

London – Never watch a bad advert again with D&AD’s Ad Filter, a Chrome and Firefox extension that replaces annoying ads with great ones.

• In 2014, there were an estimated 144m active Adblock users around the world, according to Page Fair
• D&AD’s filter only serves award-winning adverts as pre-roll
• Viewers can enjoy contemporary work and some of the best adverts from across the ages

People who use an ad-blocker but don’t want to miss out on the best ads the industry has to offer can now have their cake and eat it too. D&AD’s Ad Filter only displays award-winning ads as pre-roll when streaming video content online. According to analysts at MetrixLab, 94% of all YouTube pre-roll ads are skipped as soon as possible, with consumers tired of being subjected to poorly conceived ads.

‘We wanted to demonstrate that people don’t hate advertising, they just hate bad advertising,’ explains Olivier Apers, ECD of design agency BETC Paris, who collaborated on the filter.

The Big Picture: Advertisers are all too conscious of pre-roll retention and are hitting back with playful homages to this consumer behaviour. Read our article on Geico’s unskippable advert for more.