Recent research suggests that nearly 50% of primetime TV viewers are engaging with a second screen during their TV viewing. Advertisers, aware of the growth of second screen usage, are increasingly concerned whether anyone is watching the commercials they paid so much to air.
But before we all decide that TV advertising is no longer viable, it’s important to remember that there have always been distractions to draw attention away from the screen when the show paused for a commercial break.
It’s not that people are more distracted today, it’s that there are different things distracting them. Decades ago families watched TV together and people often used the commercial breaks to chat with one another. Even when watching alone, viewers would use the time to thumb through a magazine or grab a snack. In fact, despite new distractions and the growth of time-shifted viewing, trended commercial recall data suggests that the average TV commercial is achieving about the same levels of engagement as the average TV commercial 20 years ago.
To succeed with a TV commercial, the same rules still apply – you have to have content that people are motivated to engage with. The most engaging commercials have always engaged up to 10 times more viewers than the non-engaging commercials, when media weights and exposure opportunities are held constant. Those who have always believed that the power of an ad campaign rests on the strength of the creative are still right.
What has changed? Advertisers now have more opportunities than ever to insert themselves into the distractions. When families chatted person to person, brands had little chance to involve themselves. Now, when individuals pause to chat online, brands can – and do – present themselves. Today’s advertisers have more chances to insert themselves into viewers’ distractions, but consumers are resourceful and prone to decide for themselves what to attend to. The onus is on the creative in new media venues – much as it has always been – to compel people to engage.
In old media and new, there is no straight line between exposure opportunities and actual advertising engagement. Advertisers should be cautious drawing conclusions about the strength of a campaign, or the relative effectiveness of different elements in a media plan, if they base solely on OTS (‘opportunities to see’) data or other exposure metrics that don’t factor in the quality of the creative itself. While averages are easier to deal with, consumers don’t choose to engage based on averages. They choose to engage based on content that is entertaining, informative, or worthy of their attention.
