Highest retention among young in a group setting

By Kevin Downey

     The young and affluent are notoriously tough for advertisers to reach.
   But one place to find them is the Super Bowl, when both groups pay more attention to the commercials than other demographic groups, according to a research study conducted by Bruskin-Goldring that was commissioned by Empower MediaMarketing.
   That, in addition to a huge number of viewers, goes a long way to explain why CBS will pull in a record $150 million in advertising for the Baltimore Ravens versus New York Giants match-up and other Super Bowl-related programming on the 28^th.
    The Super Bowl has become a TV viewing event that draws viewers to the commercials as much as the game.
    In fact, 16 percent of viewers say they pay more attention to the ads than the game itself.
   But what comes as a surprise is that viewers watching the game in a party environment are among the most attentive to the commercials. The prevailing notion has been that people in a group are more distracted and less likely to watch or remember ads.
   That, however, is not the case during the Super Bowl.
    Young viewers, for example, are the most likely to watch the game with a large group and are also the most likely to remember the commercials, the study found.
   Fully 50 percent of adults 18-20 watch with six or more other people, and 77 percent say they pay more attention to ads during the Super Bowl than they do on an average day. Forty-four percent of adults 21-24 watch with groups of six or more and 72 percent say they pay more attention.
   That compares to 58 percent of all viewers who say they pay more attention to ads during the game than normal.
     "We were trying to find out if the crowd mentality on viewing night led people to pay less attention to the commercials, even though there was a fair amount of media attention paid to them," says Julie Pahutski, senior vice president of Empower MediaMarketing’s Knowledge, Information, and Invention Group.
   "We found out the opposite, which is people pay quite a bit of attention even in a party atmosphere."
    At the same time, older viewers are less likely to watch in groups or remember the ads. Only 38 percent of adults over 55, for example, say they pay more attention to commercials during the Super Bowl than on other days.
   Like younger viewers, viewers with higher incomes tend to pay more attention to the ads.
   Fifty-one percent of people with household incomes over $50,000 pay more attention to Super Bowl commercials. That compares to 41 percent for those with incomes under $50,000, according to the Empower study, which was conducted by telephone interviews with 522 adults following the 1999 game between Denver and Atlanta.
    Pahutski says the fact that Super Bowl weekend has become a TV viewing event is a key reason why the attention paid to commercials varies so much from most other days of the year.
    And viewing during the game is certainly unusual.
    Seventy-five percent of viewers watch the game with groups of two or more, according to the Empower study, with 26 percent watching with groups of six or more. Twenty-seven percent of viewers watch the game at someone else’s home and 4 percent watch in a public place, such as a bar.
   Many of those viewers, it seems, are watching to be part of the event rather than to catch the game.
   "It’s a testament to advertising on the Super Bowl that the commercials have become part of the event," says Pahutski.
   "ABC found that 30 percent of people watch to the see the ads and aren’t interested in the game. If you’re not interested in the game, you’re going to focus on the ads."

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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