Distracted Viewing Reduces Brand Recall By Half

Brands must cre­ate con­tent that is relat­able, fun­ny, con­tains good audio, and is on mul­ti­ple screens to reach TV view­ers with adver­tis­ing.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

It is get­ting increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to reach con­sumers with adver­tis­ing while they watch TV, which high­lights the oblig­a­tion of brands to cre­ate con­tent that is relat­able, fun­ny, con­tains good audio, and is on mul­ti­ple screens. That’s accord­ing to a new study from AOL.


Ear­li­er this year, Deloitte’s Dig­i­tal Democ­ra­cy Sur­vey found 86 per­cent of con­sumers are mul­ti­task­ing while they watch TV.

In addi­tion, Deloitte said less than one-quar­ter of these mul­ti­task­ing activ­i­ties are direct­ly relat­ed to the pro­grams con­sumers are watch­ing.

In oth­er words, con­sumers are dis­tract­ed while they watch TV.

In a more recent study, AOL, which says it want­ed to “quan­ti­fy the impact divert­ed atten­tion has on adver­tis­ing,” found this so-called dis­tract­ed view­ing has a pro­found impact on adver­tis­ers.

One such effect: dis­tract­ed view­ing reduces brand recall by more than half. Less than a quar­ter of view­ers could remem­ber a brand’s ad when dis­tract­ed by anoth­er con­nect­ed device while watch­ing TV, which was the worst per­form­ing plat­form, accord­ing to AOL.

In addi­tion, AOL found low­er recall makes it more dif­fi­cult to shift brand atti­tudes and it makes it much hard­er for brands to influ­ence pur­chase deci­sions. What’s more, AOL says Gen­er­a­tion Y is more like­ly to get dis­tract­ed when con­sum­ing video con­tent than oth­er demo­graph­ics. As a result, it takes 148 impres­sions in prime­time TV to have the same ROI as 100 impres­sions in short-form video con­tent, accord­ing to AOL.

The study also found women are more dis­tract­ed than men.

Women just mul­ti­task more,” said Cort­ney Hensel­er, direc­tor of con­sumer insights at AOL. “We are very adept at doing that and doing more mul­ti-task­ing is the main rea­son we need more impres­sions from TV.”

So what does this mean for brands?

Alma Der­ricks, direc­tor at Deloitte, was opti­mistic in the ear­li­er study.

Even with so much frag­men­ta­tion in the mar­ket, there’s an enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­tal­ize on these behav­iors and cre­ate offer­ings that engage con­sumers in new, mean­ing­ful ways,” Der­ricks said.

For its part, AOL says mea­sure­ment meth­ods need to adapt to frag­ment­ed atten­tion.

Con­ve­nient­ly, AOL says it has devel­oped “the first sys­tem for mea­sur­ing this effect called the Video Ad Atten­tion Index,” or what it calls “the first con­cert­ed, sci­en­tif­ic, sur­vey-based effort to mea­sure and tack­le this very real issue for mar­keters and adver­tis­ers.”

Accord­ing to Hensel­er, “The met­ric is meant to be a liv­ing, breath­ing tool…[that is] a very inter­est­ing way to quan­ti­fy what that impact is to con­sumers when we think about all that mul­ti­task­ing.”

In addi­tion, Hensel­er says brands need to under­stand that dis­tract­ed view­ing hap­pens and use a tool like this AOL met­ric to think about how they com­mu­ni­cate with con­sumers and “what they can do to try to push through the dis­trac­tion and get aware­ness,” she says. “We do know anec­do­tal­ly that if it’s things that con­sumers are inter­est­ed in, they will pay more atten­tion,” although she acknowl­edges that’s a dif­fi­cult thing for brands to nec­es­sar­i­ly know.

How­ev­er, she also notes that when con­sumers are mul­ti­task­ing, audio can help trig­ger them in.

If it’s real­ly great, engag­ing [or] fun­ny music, it can draw [con­sumers] back into the ad itself,” Hensel­er notes. But, again, she notes it’s “real­ly sub­jec­tive to the con­sumer.”

To wit: In the AOL study, 50 per­cent of respon­dents said music in ads gets their atten­tion on TV and 75 per­cent of respon­dents said humor gets their atten­tion.

In addi­tion, she says tablets and smart­phones are less impact­ed by dis­trac­tion over­all because they are “more per­son­al and clos­er to your face.”

In oth­er words, tar­get­ing mul­ti­ple screens can also help brands cut through the noise. Cer­tain TV pro­gram­ming, such as live sports, is also not as impact­ed by dis­trac­tions as oth­er shows.

It’s hard to blan­ket­ly say, ‘Spend less [on TV],’” Hensel­er says. “But this does show that TV is not as effec­tive as oth­er medi­ums and it is some­thing to think about – to diver­si­fy the mix of screens and get the most val­ue from ad val­ue. The more places [a brand has] to diver­si­fy where it com­mu­ni­cates to con­sumers, the bet­ter.”

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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