Canal+ Brand Solutions – the sales house for Canal+ in France – released the results of a study on the advertising experience offered on Stream+, their aggregated digital video offer, which limits ads to an average of three minutes per hour and two pre-roll ads at the start of each program. The results show that a short and carefully balanced “advertising choreography” – two pre-rolls instead of five – boosts effectiveness across all stages of the marketing funnel.

Keep ad breaks short: two pre-rolls at the start on Stream+

Stream+ is a single entry point to buy premium video advertising from CANAL+ and selected partners (HBO Max and Free). The offer is built around premium long form content and connected TV viewing. The policy is to keep advertising breaks short: viewers see two pre-roll spots at the beginning of a programme, and overall ad intensity is about three minutes per hour (total ad time, not number of spots).

On the 3 streaming platforms, CANAL+, HBO MAX and Free Ciné, these ads run before the programme starts. The test focuses on a change in the length and sequence of the ad pod rather than on a new creative format, which indicates that the setup can run with standard instream video assets. In practical terms, an ad pod is a short group of consecutive ads, and the change relates to how this pod is organised rather than to bespoke production or very narrow targeting.

A controlled CSA study compares two and five ads on

Canal+ Brand Solutions asked CSA Research to isolate the effect of pod length in a controlled TV screen setting. The protocol fixed the content (The White Lotus, a well known premium drama) and compared two pre-rolls with a longer sequence of five, across a sample of 450 individuals.

Within this test, the sequence with two ads improved both salience and consideration indicators:

• Spontaneous brand recall rose by 10 points and top-of-mind (TOM), defined as the first brand named without prompts, and by 26 points versus the sequence with five ads.
• Brand image increased by 11 points and positive emotion by 12 points.
• As an early conversion proxy, intention to visit a store increased by 3 points.

Pod clutter played a clear role: 54% of those exposed to two pre-rolls remembered all brands in the pod, compared with 7% in the pod with five ads. In this setting, the results suggest that short, reasoned ad sequences produced stronger outcomes than the longer pod, beyond the effect of the content itself.

Package this as a “Short Pod” with a published ad load and optional measurement

From a commercial point of view, this format can be packaged as a “Short Pod” experience on Stream+: two pre-rolls at the start of content, with the platform’s average ad intensity of around three minutes per hour. Stream+ campaigns can be analysed using brand lift surveys via Happydemics (surveys used to measure effectiveness) and attention measurement via xpln.ai (viewing behaviour analytics) as ways to analyse campaign impact; advertisers can use these as add-ons if they want extra reporting based on their own creative.