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ignore TV ads.
Study: Notice least during top primetime shows
By Kevin Downey
Almost as much of a ritual as Super Bowl itself is the post-game chatter, sometimes lasting weeks, over how much everyone pays attention to ads airing during the game.
What's far less talked about, and perhaps deserving more attention, is how little viewers in general pay attention to the TV ads that run all the other days of the year, some $50 billion worth.
It seems they don't pay very much attention at all, according to a study by a British academic, Mark Ritson, an assistant professor of marketing at the London Business School.
Though Ritson's study was limited, including just a handful of subjects over a week, the results are nothing short of devastating to the case for advertising on TV.
His findings: Viewers only watch a small fraction of commercials, with people more often drifting off to other activities during commercial breaks.
Shows garnering the least interest in commercials were the most popular shows, and the shows for which advertisers tended to pay the most. These are the shows with the largest audiences.
Perhaps most devastating of all is Ritson's finding that viewers attentiveness to advertising is notably low during primetime, which of course is when advertisers pay the most to gain that attention.
Another less surprising finding is that people's attention to commercials plummets when others are in the room.
“People tend to be more social during primetime and they are less tired, meaning they are more likely to engage in other activities,” Ritson says. “This would suggest that primetime ads are over-valued.”
Ritson conducted his study by placing video cameras and microphones in eight homes with people from various demographic groups. Each was recorded watching TV for one week and later interviewed.
Ritson broke out his viewers' activities during commercials into six categories: 1, socializing, 2, changing channels, 3, taking care of tasks unrelated to TV watching, such as doing the laundry, 4, reading, 5, watching the commercials and 6, perhaps interacting with them.
One of the homes monitored was that of a retired man, and he was found to be watching commercials only 23 percent of the time and to be interacting with commercials only 1 percent of the time. Interacting includes such activities as talking about them or singing along with a jingle.
Another participant was a single female living with roommates.
She watched commercials 31 percent of the time and interacted 15 percent of the time. Her most frequent activity, however, was socializing during commercial breaks, which she did 47 percent of the time.
The young woman's attentiveness to commercials was much lower when others were in the room. She was found to watch commercials roughly 70 percent of the time when alone, 30 percent of the time when another person was in the room and virtually none of the time when there were four or more people in the room.
An even bigger factor determining whether viewers pay attention to commercials is the time of day they watch TV.
In general, TV viewers are most likely to watch commercials later in the evening when they are winding down and have few people around.
The single female watched commercials about 10 percent of the time at 6 p.m., 20 percent of the time at 8 p.m. and 65 percent of the time at midnight.
“This is a key issue, which is advertising-centric, meaning, what does the ad have to do to get the consumer interested,” says Ritson.
“If a consumer isn’t watching the ad they won’t have the opportunity to notice it. I would argue, and this is hard to prove, that the time of day will be much more predictive in whether someone watches an ad.”
Ritson says that while this phase of his study is too small to be reflective of the whole population, his findings raise major concerns for media buyers.
One of those concerns, he says, is the value of data from Nielsen’s People Meter and the U.K.’s comparable Barb system. Both are used to electronically measure the number of people watching TV and both provide the ratings used to negotiate ad rates.
While the People Meter and Barb are widely considered the best tools available, Ritson warns, as many media buyers and sellers have before him, that neither measures if TV viewers are paying attention to commercials.
“Qualitatively, what is being researched is bullshit, frankly, while the quantitative research is great,” he says.
“What we’re trying to do is be good academics and create a discussion.”
Still, while the study raises questions, Ritson says he will need to follow up with a bigger study and says he hopes his findings ultimately lead to media buyers developing models to predict commercial viewing behavior.
He also says that while not all media buyers in the U.K. have embraced his findings, he’s trying to get people talking about a topic that’s often overlooked.
Noted media consultant Erwin Ephron says similar research has been done in the past and most media buyers are aware that viewers don’t always pay attention to commercials.
“One thing this type of measurement ignores is the fact that the consumer is an active part of the commercial,” he says.
“People pay attention to commercials that are relevant to them. The issue isn’t whether everybody is being attentive to all commercials. If it were, advertising wouldn’t be effective at all.”
He adds, however, that Ritson’s study does raise an important issue.
“We already know a lot about this, but you may ask why we don’t consider it more in what we do. That’s a good question.”
February 6, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Kevin Downy is a staff writer for Media Life.
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