Designing Promotional Reels That Turn 'Skips' Into 'Saves'
🚚 SHIPPED
🛠️ IN DEVELOPMENT
Promo Reels on Paramount+ face a big obstacle: the "Skip" button. These short trailers play right before a viewer's content begins, promoting new shows on the platform. Most viewers skip them immediately. I designed an "Add to My List" button interaction for Promo Reels that surfaces key metadata — show title, genre, season count or runtime (depending on content type), and content rating — giving viewers enough context to make a confident save decision before moving on. Validated through usability testing against the PM's original direction, my approach turned a skippable interruption into an actionable opportunity to discover new content.
My Role
Product Designer
Timeline
August 2025
Platforms
CONTEXT
Promos remained a missed opportunity
As of 2025, Paramount+ had over 77 million subscribers watching content across its streaming apps. Between when a user hits Play and their content begins, Paramount+ runs short promotional trailers — Promo Reels — showcasing new and featured shows to both Free and Paid subscribers. At the time, the only interaction available was a "Skip" button. The promo played, the user skipped it, and the moment was gone.
Other major streaming platforms were running similar pre-roll promotions, but none had tied them to a save-for-later action. The business saw an opportunity: what if we let users add promoted content to their "My List" right from the promo itself?
A Promo Reel playing before a viewer's selected content begins, on tvOS. "Skip" is the only available action.
PROBLEM
A button alone wasn't enough
The PM's initial direction was straightforward: add a "+ My List" button alongside the existing "Skip" button. But as I explored the interaction, I realized a standalone button didn't clearly communicate what would be saved. Would selecting "+ My List" add the trailer itself, or the show being advertised? Without context like the show title, genre, or season count, users could hesitate or misunderstand the action entirely. I believed the button needed contextual framing.
A more pressing constraint also surfaced: I audited Promo Reel screens across all six platforms and found that most of our Promo Reel UI was rendered by a third-party ad SDK, limiting our ability to customize that screen. When I presented these inconsistencies to Product and Engineering, we realized we'd need to scope strategically.
Promo Reels Across Platforms
Screenshots I took from Production of our Promo Reels experience.
PROCESS
Taking initiative to unblock the project
The project was initially shelved for a quarter in early 2025 after a technical limitation surfaced: on most platforms, the "Skip" button was rendered directly by a third-party ad SDK, which offered no way to modify its position or styling. We couldn't add a "+ My List" button because we didn't control that UI layer.
When the project was reassigned to me, I decided to dig into the SDK vendor's documentation myself, rather than idly wait for answers. I discovered that an alternative integration path existed: publishers could render their own custom skip UI as long as it met the vendor's design requirements. This was the path to building our own Promo Reel overlay with both "Skip" and "+ My List."
I brought this finding to our ad platform manager, who escalated the request with the vendor. Meanwhile, Product scoped the feature to the two platforms where we had full control over the player UI, so we could move forward while the broader platform question was being resolved.
KEY DECISIONS
Questioning the brief, proposing an alternative
The original ask was simple: add a "+ My List" button next to "Skip." I designed that version (Variant A), but something about it didn't sit right. The button existed, but it didn't answer a basic question a viewer would have: what exactly am I saving? The promo video was playing, a small title sat in the left corner, and two buttons appeared in the bottom right corner. There was nothing connecting the action to the content in a way that felt clear or confident.
So I proposed a second direction. Rather than just delivering on the PM's spec, I brought a counter-proposal to the table: what if we tested both approaches and let real users be the tiebreaker?
Variant A: The PM's Original Approach
Variant A: This was the design that matched the initial brief. It added a "+ My List" button to the existing promo reel UI, with little change to the layout. The show titles were already baked into the trailers, so "Tulsa King" appears in small text at the bottom left. The two CTAs sat side-by-side at the bottom right.
It was a clean, low-effort implementation, but I had a concern: without additional context, users would need to rely entirely on the video itself to understand what they'd be saving.
Variant B: My Counter-Proposal
Variant B: This was the design I proposed. I introduced more context above the buttons, pulling in the show's logo, genre label, season count or duration (depending on if it's a TV series or movie), and content rating.
My rationale was that these added elements are the same signals users rely on when browsing the content library. By surfacing them during the promo, I could give viewers enough information to make a confident save decision in seconds, without needing to leave the promo or search for the show later. Animation was added in to draw attention to the CTAs.
VALIDATING VIA RESEARCH
What users told us
I designed and ran an unmoderated usability test in Maze with 10 participants across two counterbalanced groups (A→B and B→A) to reduce order bias. Each group interacted with both designs, then answered questions about comprehension, confidence, and preference.
COMPREHENSION
100% comprehension with Variant B
Every participant correctly identified that Tulsa King was the show that would be added to their "My List." With Variant A alone, one participant responded "I have no idea."
CONFIDENCE
70% said metadata reinforced confidence in the "+ My List" button's action
7 out of 10 participants said the genre, season count, and content rating helped them feel certain about what the "+ My List" button would do, even before pressing it.
PREFERENCE
90% preferred Variant B for clarity
Across both test groups, 9 out of 10 participants selected Variant B when asked which variant made it clearer as to what the "+ My List" button would do. Zero chose Variant A.
USEFULNESS
4.1 / 5 rating for feature's usefulness
Participants described the "+ My List" button on Promo Reels as a "time saver," valuing the ability to bookmark content in the moment rather than searching for it later.
I may want to watch the actual show of the trailer later, so having the Add to My List button makes it easier than going to search the whole catalogue.
- Usability testing participant
OUTCOME
Research aligned the team towards handoff
My Maze testing results gave the team a shared, evidence-based framework that resolved days of internal debate. Both variants moved into production A/B testing against the Skip-only control — the PM's original direction as Variant A, and my research-backed counter-proposal as Variant B. The primary success metric was a statistically significant increase in "My List" adds from Promo Reels.
I delivered fully spec'd designs including interaction animations and detailed handoff documentation for engineering.
I departed Paramount+ before production A/B test results became available.
Handoff documentation for OTT (top) and Web (bottom), covering user flows, base screens, redlines, interaction specs, components, assets, and technical documentation.
REFLECTION
What I learned
In my Video Player Redesign work, I learned the value of involving research earlier in the process. However, when the research team is busy or backlogged, I learned I can leverage my UX Research background and run a quick test myself. This feature work was where I put that lesson into practice. When the team was at a standstill over which design direction to pursue, I designed and ran my own usability test to bring the users' voices into the room. The data became the tiebreaker that got everyone aligned.
I also learned that unblocking a project sometimes means doing work outside your role. Rather than waiting for someone else to investigate our third party ad vendor's limitations, I did the research myself and brought organized evidence to the conversation. Sometimes, you need to wear more hats than you originally anticipate to!