What should a 15-second video ad say?

What should a 15-second video ad say?

One true thing. A 15-second ad has room for a single claim a real customer would care about, said in the first two seconds, shown on screen as text because most people watch with the sound off, and closed with one next step. Everything else is decoration.

Fifteen seconds is roughly thirty-five to forty spoken words and four to six shots. That is a smaller budget than it sounds, and almost every weak ad I see spent it on the wrong things: a logo animation at the front, a list of six services in the middle, and a phone number at the end that nobody could memorise from a moving frame.

The discipline is subtraction. Decide what the ad is for, find the one claim that carries it, and defend that claim against everything else you would like to mention. A film that says one thing clearly beats a film that says five things politely, every time it runs.

If a viewer could only remember one sentence from your ad, which sentence would you choose? Write that one down, then build the fifteen seconds around it.

How do I find my one true thing?

Write down everything good about the business, then cross out anything a competitor could claim word for word. What survives is real. From that shortlist, pick the claim a customer would repeat to a friend unprompted, because a sentence people repeat is a sentence that works when you are out of the room.

The test I run on a candidate claim is the swap test. If a competing business could paste their name over your line and run the same ad, you wrote a format. The fix is specificity: a real number, a real place, a real method, a real promise about what happens after they call. That is where the voice comes from, and specificity is also what makes a small local business sound bigger than a national one reading a script.

• A real customer would repeat it out loud to a friend without being prompted.
• It is specific enough that a competitor could not paste their own name over it.
• It is true today, provable, and nobody has to squint at it.
• It answers a question people actually ask you on the phone.
• You could put it on a sign outside the building and stand behind it.
• Removing it collapses the ad. Everything else in the film could go and the point would survive.

What almost never survives: passion, quality, service, dedication, and being family owned since a year nobody checks. Those are true for you and for everyone else in the feed, which makes them invisible. If a claim needs the viewer to already trust you, it belongs in the thirty, after the proof has done its work.

Why do the first two seconds decide everything?

Because that is when a stranger decides whether the next thirteen seconds happen. The thumb is already moving when your ad appears, and the frame has to interrupt a scroll that was going fine without you. Every second spent warming up is a second the ad spends on people who already left.

1. 01

   Show the outcome first

   The finished deck, the packed order, the full patio, the clean floor. Start where the story ends and let the rest explain how it got there.

2. 02

   Name the person

   "Castlegar homeowners with a deck that did not survive the winter." A viewer who is that person stops moving. Everyone else was never going to buy.

3. 03

   Open on motion

   Something already happening when the frame appears. A static logo card in the first second is the most common way to lose an entire audience.

4. 04

   Ask the question they already have

   One honest question on screen, in their words. Use it sparingly, because a film full of questions answers nothing.

5. 05

   Show the ugly before

   The rot, the leak, the mess, the empty booking calendar. Problems hold attention longer than solutions do, and the solution gets the next twelve seconds.

6. 06

   Lead with the number

   A real price, a real timeline, a real distance. Only if it is genuinely yours, because an invented number is the fastest way to lose a small town.

Notice what is absent from all six: your logo, a slow fade in, a drone shot establishing a town, and the word "welcome". Those are the openings of a video someone chose to watch. An ad is a video nobody chose, which is the whole difference in how it gets built.

How do I write an ad for people watching with the sound off?

Write it silently first. Put the key line on screen inside the first two seconds, caption everything after that, and make sure the pictures carry the meaning on their own. Then add voice and music as an upgrade for the minority who have their sound on. Build the other way around and most of your audience gets a beautiful film about nothing.

• Assume every viewer starts with the sound off, because most of them do.
• The key sentence goes on screen as text within the first two seconds, large enough to read on a phone held at arm length.
• Text sits inside the safe middle of the frame, clear of the interface elements the platform stacks along the top and bottom.
• One line of text at a time. Two competing captions means neither gets read.
• Captions carry the voiceover for anyone who does turn the sound on, and for anyone who needs them to follow along at all.
• High contrast, no thin type over busy footage, and never trust a colour to be readable until you have watched it on an actual phone outdoors.

This is also the accessibility case, and the two point the same direction. Captions serve anyone who cannot hear the audio and anyone who happens to be in a quiet waiting room, and they cost nothing to add. The same discipline improves the writing too, because a sentence you have to fit on a phone screen gets shorter and clearer very quickly.

What goes in each second of a 15?

Five beats, and they do not overlap. Stop the scroll, say the one thing, prove it, ask for one action, show the name. If a shot is doing none of those five jobs, it is taking time from a shot that would.

1. 01

   Seconds 0 to 2: the stop

   The hook. Outcome, person, motion, or problem, with the key line already on screen. If this fails, nothing after it exists.

2. 02

   Seconds 2 to 6: the one true thing

   The single claim the ad is making, shown as much as said. This is the sentence you would defend across a counter.

3. 03

   Seconds 6 to 11: the proof

   Real work, real premises, real faces. Two or three shots that make the claim believable without adding a second claim.

4. 04

   Seconds 11 to 14: the next step

   One action, in plain words. Book, call, visit, get the quote. One only, because two choices is the same as none.

5. 05

   Second 15: the name

   Business name and how to find you, held long enough to read. The logo earns the last beat, and it never earns the first one.

The beats shift a little by industry, and the structure holds. A restaurant spends more of the middle on the food and less on the claim. A contractor spends more on proof, because the buyer is deciding whether you can be trusted in their house. A shop can compress the proof and spend the extra second on the product in a real hand.

Why is a 30-second ad built differently?

They are talking to two different people. The fifteen has to stop someone who was not looking, so it opens hard, says one thing, and gets out. The thirty is for someone already leaning in, usually because they saw the fifteen or already know the name, so it can open slower, add proof, answer the doubt, and earn a longer close.

This is why I build the two cuts separately with their own openings. Trimming the thirty down produces a fifteen whose opening was written for someone who had already decided to watch, which is exactly the viewer the fifteen does not have. The short video ads built from your real work page shows how both cuts arrive.

What should I cut from a short ad?

Cut anything doing none of the five jobs. The list below is where the seconds usually leak, and every one of these has cost a real business real attention. Removing them is free and it makes the ad better immediately.

• A logo animation at the front. It costs you the only two seconds that mattered.
• A second offer, a second service, or a second call to action fighting the first.
• Music doing the emotional work the writing was supposed to do.
• Stock footage of people who do not work for you, in a building that is not yours.
• Invented statistics, made-up review counts, or a claim you would not put on a sign.
• "Passionate about quality service." Nobody has ever repeated that sentence to a friend.
• A phone number nobody can memorise from a moving frame. Send them somewhere clickable.

Invented numbers deserve their own warning in a small town. Overstate a review count or make up a percentage and the one person who checks will tell everyone, and that story outlives the ad by years. A modest real number does more work than an impressive fake one, in the feed and in the coffee shop afterwards.

What should my ad say, by what I want it to do?

The structure holds across every goal, and the content of each beat changes with what you are asking for. Booking a service, filling a room, selling a product, and announcing something new each put a different sentence in the middle. Pick the goal first, because it decides the claim.

Booking a service

Lead with the problem you fix and the season it bites. One true thing: what happens when they call. Close on the booking step.

Filling seats or tables

Lead with the room, the plate, or the patio at its best moment. One true thing: the reason tonight is worth leaving the house. Close with hours and where.

Selling a product

Lead with the product doing its job in a real hand. One true thing: the detail that makes yours worth choosing. Close on where to buy it.

Announcing something new

Lead with the news itself in the first frame. One true thing: what changes for the customer. Close with the date.

Getting the quote request

Lead with the finished result. One true thing: how easy the first step is. Close with a free quote or a scan they can run themselves.

Building a season ahead

Lead with the weather or the window closing. One true thing: what booking early actually gets them. Close with the booking window.

Whatever the goal, the ad needs somewhere solid to land. A film that stops the scroll and sends someone to a slow, confusing page has done its job and wasted it. If you are running clips yourself alongside a paid ad, my guide on phone videos and produced ads doing different jobs covers how the two work together, and local content that sells without being pushy covers the tone that keeps a small-town audience on your side.

How do I write my own 15-second ad?

Six steps, in order, and the first one is the hardest because it means giving up five good sentences to keep one. Do it on paper before anyone opens a camera. A film shot from a weak script is an expensive way to find out the script was weak.

1. 1Write down every good thing about your business, then cross out everything a competitor could also claim. What survives is your shortlist.
2. 2Pick one. Say it out loud in a single sentence a customer would repeat, using their words instead of your industry words.
3. 3Write the first two seconds separately, as its own job: outcome, person, motion, or problem. Nothing else goes here.
4. 4Storyboard four to six shots you can genuinely get: your real work, your real premises, your real faces.
5. 5Write the on-screen text line by line, then read the film with the sound off and check it still makes sense.
6. 6End with one action and one name held long enough to read. Then cut anything that is not doing one of those five jobs.

Then run two or three versions with different openings against each other, because nobody knows which one stops people, including me. If you are still deciding whether film is the right spend at all, does your business need video or better photos is the honest place to start, and a free website scan will tell you whether the page behind the ad is ready for the traffic.

Sources and further reading

• Meta Business Help Center

  Official guidance for Facebook and Instagram advertising, including placement requirements, aspect ratios, and where interface elements sit over your frame.

• YouTube Help: create a Short

  Length and framing rules for Shorts, worth checking before assuming a vertical cut will run unchanged across every platform.

• W3C WAI: captions

  What makes captions usable and why they matter. The accessibility case and the silent-autoplay case point at exactly the same practice.

• Google Search Central: video SEO best practices

  How Google finds and displays video, including thumbnails and the surrounding page context, for when the same film also lives on your website.

Frequently asked questions