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Consumer Behavior
Why Consumers No Longer Like Advertising
Is the problem the medium or the message?
Posted July 23, 2020
Advertising was once a far more important part of culture than it is today. New ad campaigns were frequently covered in popular media. It was not unusual for morning coffee conversations to be about the latest commercials seen the night before.
In the 1970s, it was ads like “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!” (Alka-Seltzer) or “Pardon me. Do you have any Grey Poupon?” In the 1980s, the Apple Macintosh “1984” commercial … the 1990s, Cindy Crawford’s “Just One Look” Pepsi commercial. Advertising was engaging and enjoyable to watch, making brands successful and profitable.
The event that transformed advertising to mass-culture status was the “Creative Revolution”—the decade from 1960-1970. This “golden age” of advertising resulted from the storytelling power of 30-second TV commercials and the talents of creative advertising pioneers like Bill Bernbach and Mary Wells.
The spark of the “revolution” was the intuitive understanding of what goes on inside the mind of the consumer—the realization that establishing an emotional connection between brand and consumer is more effective than hard sell or competitive positioning. The Creative Revolution was a vivid departure from traditional print, radio, and early television advertising that focused on fact-based arguments of why a brand was better than its competition.
The philosophy of the Creative Revolution continued up to the millennium as it influenced advertising produced by the leading agencies. Their work was inspired by creative directors like Lee Clow (“1984”) and Lee Garfinkel (“Just One Look," Pepsi).
Advertising changed in the early 2000s when the Internet and companies like America Online began to dominate consumers’ media usage. Today, over 50% of advertising spending is on digital media.
But consumer response to advertising on digital media is very different from that on television. Research shows that up to two-thirds of consumers find them annoying. Even more condemning is the fact that 30 percent of consumers have installed adblocker programs to shield themselves from advertising.
So why have consumers fallen out of love with advertising? Is it because they now view advertising on a smartphone, computer, or other digital device as opposed to a TV? Or maybe ads just don’t connect with the consumer anymore.
If the legendary media guru Marshall McLuhan was still alive, he would argue that digital technology changed the relationship between the consumer and media. McLuhan theorized that “the medium is the message.” In our digital world, he would say that new media technology changed how consumers experience advertising.
The smartphone is the primary media source for 40 percent of U.S. adults and 60 percent of those under thirty. The research firm Dscout reported that 76 times a day the average user initiates and receives calls and texts, watches videos, uses apps, and conducts searches. While doing this, they click, type, swipe, and tap on their phones 2,617 times!
Smartphone technology has dramatically altered consumers’ media experience. Think about watching an advertisement on the small screen of a smartphone. Quite a different experience than sitting on the couch and watching television.
Another contributor to consumers’ turn-off from advertising is mental and physical exhaustion from too much media exposure. Research by eMarketer estimates that in 2019 the average consumer was engaged over nine hours each day on digital media and TV.
And, of course, with greater media exposure comes more commercials. In the 1970s, most consumers saw commercials while watching three hours of primetime television. Federal regulations allowed 84 30-second commercials to appear during this period. By including ads in newspapers, magazines, and on the car radio, it was estimated that the 1970s consumer’s daily total exposure was roughly 1,600 messages. Today, with digital media and more time of exposure, industry sources estimate that the consumer’s daily total is 5,000 to 12,000 advertisements.
So a lot has happened that affected how consumers feel about advertising: a change in media behavior because of technology, overstimulation from near-constant exposure to media, and inundation by advertising messages at levels far beyond possible awareness and processing.
McLuhan was right. The fact is that digital media technology has changed the relationship between the consumer and advertising. This has happened throughout the history of consumer media. In response, advertising was reshaped from print to radio to television to digital.
But there is a much more important factor that marketers and advertisers have not considered in their efforts to create advertising on digital media that consumers like. The technology has changed, but the mind of the consumer has remained the same. Today’s edition of the human mind likes engaging stories that are full of emotion—just like its predecessor did in 1970.
Media scientist Janet Murray (professor at the Georgia Tech and formerly MIT) wrote that each medium must find its narrative voice and learn to tell a story through its technology. Before advertisers can use digital media to its full potential, they first must learn how to use it to tell stories that consumers like.
Copyright 2020 Peter Noel Murray, Ph.D.
