As advertising continues to digitise, agencies now have a new objective – keeping eyeballs on ads for as long as possible.

Any marketer would know it’s no easy feat. That’s why Google launched the Skippy Awards a a competition for creative agencies to experiment with new ways of keeping eyeballs on ads.

The winner is judged on YouTube’s performance metrics of view through rate, average watchtime and ad recall.

Google has crowned Ogilvy the winner of this year’s award for its Bumble BFF: Break Every Excuse spot.

This was the fourth year the Skippys have been held.

Google Australia head of creative development Fiona Walford said: “In these times, it’s important we continue to recognise our agency peers and colleagues who bring exceptional creativity, passion and innovation to their work. It has been a privilege to work with Bumble and the agencies involved to help bring attention to the importance of human connections through this competition. Congratulations to Ogilvy on being this year’s Skippys winner.”

“Young people in Australia are often reluctant to admit they are lonely and there is a stigma attached to admitting you need a friend. At Bumble we want to show young Australian women that it is healthy and necessary to form new friendships throughout life, and to support women in finding new ways to do so,” said Bumble associate director APAC PR + comms Lucille McCart.

Ogilvy Sydney creative director Jenny Mak said: “We made a creative decision to stick to the guiding principles outlined by Google when we designed the story arc for our TrueView film. Understanding the key moments when people usually stop watching and the fundamentals to keep people engaged gave us a clear plan not only for our concept, but for the final edit. It was an interesting exercise to trade conventional storytelling for the science of numbers, but we trusted the process and it ultimately paid off. Plus who doesn’t love watching stuff being smashed in super slow motion?”

Ogilvy edged out entries from Leo Burnett Sydney, R/GA Sydney and TBWA Melbourne to take out this year’s prize.