IRVINE, CA—Suggesting that only a minu scule fraction of the internet warranted even a slight delay before viewing, a report released Wednesday by the University of California, Irvine, indicated that just 2 percent of all online content was worth sitting through a 15-second ad. “Our research found that putting up with an obtrusive 15-second video promoting Bud Light, Esurance, or any number of other brands was very rarely justified by the material that followed it,” said the report’s lead author, professor Colleen Noren, adding that the acceptable 2 percent included content such as a handful of substantive Twitter feeds, a negligible portion of Spotify’s music library, the top story on The New York Times’ website, and 15 to 20 YouTube videos at most. “But we also determined that when users were given the option to skip the remainder of an ad after just five seconds, the amount of the internet that wasn’t a complete waste of time jumped to 15 percent. An even larger amount, 20 percent, was worthy of muting the ad immediately, clicking over to a second tab, and then returning to the original page when the ad was estimated to be over.” Noren went on to say that not a single piece of internet content was worth sitting through a 30-second ad and speculated there almost certainly never would be.

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