London, Feb 25 (Inditop.com) Viewers seem to pay less attention to creative TV ads, says a new study.
The finding overturns the long-held assumption that ads with emotional content encourage viewers to be more attentive.
The study used an eye-tracking device to measure the real-time attention paid to a range of ads with varying levels of emotional content.
The ads were embedded in an episode of the sitcom Frasier. Participants were unaware that advertising was the subject of the research.
Results showed that viewers paid less attention to likeable, creative ads, and more attention to factual information-giving ads even when they didn’t like them.
Robert Heath of the Bath University School of Management, who led the study, said: “In a relaxed situation like TV watching, attention tends to be used mainly as a defence mechanism. If an ad bombards us with new information, our natural response is to pay attention so we can counter-argue what it is telling us.
“On the other hand, if we feel we like and enjoy an ad, we tend to be more trustful of it and therefore we don’t feel we need to pay too much attention to it,” said Heath.
“The sting in the tail is that by paying less attention, we are less able to counter-argue what the ad is communicating. In effect, we let our guard down and leave ourselves more open to the advertiser’s message.”
This has serious implications for certain categories of ads, particularly ads for products that can be harmful to health, and products aimed at children, said a Bath release.
“The findings suggest that if you don’t want an ad to affect you in this way, you should watch it more closely.”
The research was carried out with Agnes Nairn, professor of marketing at EM-Lyon Business School and research fellow at the Bath’s School of Management, and Paul Bottomley, distinguished research fellow at Cardiff University’s Business School.
The findings were published in the Journal of Advertising Research.
