Together with
Quick one this week.
If you review video ads for a living, you know the slog. To write one line about an ad you reopen it, wait for it to load, scrub to the bit you half-remember, lose it, scrub again. By ad nine you cannot recall whether the airport one was Beis or Away.
Jess wrote a script that kills the scrubbing. It is yours.
Point it at any video in a Chrome tab. It grabs a frame every four seconds and lines them into one wide image under 1MB, the whole ad on a single line.
Under A Minute to Run:
Open the video in Chrome, let it play through once.
Press F12, click the Console tab.
Paste the script, hit Enter.
combined_frames.jpg lands in your downloads. That is the thumbnail.
P.S. The four-second interval is a number in the script. Tighten it for short, fast-cut ads, widen it for long ones so the strip fits your slide.
Two ways I use it.
In a report, the strip goes on one slide and the client sees the whole ad, no video to load.
In an audit, forty ads deep, one glance tells me which was which.
I ran it on a Studio Tour Tokyo ad this week and had my note written (opens on the family, leads with "20 minutes from Shinjuku," closes on a branded search) before the video would have reloaded.
Sneak peek of the result.
Get the Script
Reply with the word “thumbnail” and I will send you the skill, one click to install.
It runs on a video playing in your browser or a file you drop in, straight from a project folder, which is how we use it.
Have fun with it.
It isn't a mystery, and it isn't bad luck. Every ad can spend only so much before the women who respond to its angle have all seen it, and after that the numbers slide on their own. Every creative has a ceiling. Once you know its shape, you can see yourself approaching it with weeks to spare.
More ad-ventures coming!
The Creative Strategist
at The Marketer's Memo
🎧 From Me to You
You've seen what one small script can do. Now meet the teammate that helps with the rest.
Your AI Marketing Teammate
Marketers are using AI for everything from research to reporting. The challenge is getting reliable data into those workflows.
Agent A by Ahrefs combines AI with Ahrefs' marketing intelligence to help you move faster. Ask it to analyze competitors, find keyword opportunities, identify content gaps, investigate ranking drops, audit technical issues, track your brand's visibility in AI search, or build content plans and reports.
Agent A comes with pre-built marketing skills, so you don't need to master prompt engineering to get useful results. It can also connect with tools like Slack, Notion, HubSpot, WordPress, and more, helping teams turn insights into action without constantly switching between platforms.
If you want an AI assistant that does more than generate text, see what Agent A can do for your marketing workflow at ahrefs.com/agent-a.
P.S.
Don't forget to reply with "thumbnail" to get your script.
If you have any questions about the skill, just reply to this email or reach us at [email protected].
