We’re going to start this blog entry with a heavy dose of honesty. We all hate pre-roll videos. I do. You do. Your grandma does. Besides ingrown hairs and hangnails, I’m relatively certain nothing in life is more annoying than being forced to sit through 15-30 seconds of nonsense, just to watch the two minutes of nonsense my heart was originally set on. And depending on which source you hold true to heart, upwards of 94% of YouTube viewers feel the same, electing to skip pre-roll ads for this very reason. Instead of avoiding the medium altogether, or dancing around this widespread disdain, Burger King addresses the issue head on with its latest digital campaign by acknowledging what you were already thinking: UGGHHHHHH. The Home of the Whopper produced 64 different pre-roll spots, all tailored to sync up with many of the most common searches on YouTube. From users searching for anything ranging from music videos to animal attacks, the ads are very blunt in addressing what’s obvious: who cares about stupid burger deals when all you really want to see is a video of a cat playing the keyboard? And this is exactly what makes the ads work. What turns most off to advertising isn’t the notion of advertising itself, but the “gloss” factor present in the vast majority of ads cycled into the mainstream. Not to state the obvious, but consumers today aren’t what they used to be. With a world of information available at the click of a mouse (tap of a touchscreen?), the modern consumer demands for an ad to be relatable, honest even, to be deemed worthy of their time – something that has been largely absent thus far in the pre-roll medium. Burger King does an exceptional job here in not only keeping you watching each video for the duration, but in making you chuckle along the way. Hats off to BK for doing the impossible: using pre-roll video to make us hate pre-roll videos just a little bit less. So meta, Burger King. SO. META.