TV Outperforms Digital Platforms in Viewer Ad Attention & Recall

The study, conducted by Hub Entertainment Research, was designed to compare viewing of TV shows and advertising across screens to determine whether engagement and recall differ among platforms, and to identify the drivers that have the greatest impact on the viewing experience.

Key findings include:

Attention to advertising and ad recall, two important measures of advertising engagement, are similar among viewers using computer, smartphone and tablet, but higher among those watching a TV set. For ad recall, 62% of TV viewers were able to recall half or more advertisers, followed by tablet (47%), smartphone (46%) and computer (45%). For attentiveness, 29% of participants rated TV an 8-10 on a 10-point scale where 10 means complete attention, ahead of smartphone (23%), computer (20%) and tablet (17%).

Enjoyment, a measure of program engagement, was high across all platforms but especially so among smartphone viewers.

Platform experience is related to actual screen size. Independent of other factors, the viewing experience was significantly more positive among TV set viewers. 89% of participants rated TV an 8-10 on a 10-point scale for enjoyment, followed by tablet (63%), computer (54%) and smartphone (53%).

Multi-tasking negatively impacts engagement with ads (sponsor recall) but not with show (plot recall). In addition, the study found that very little multi-tasking behavior (7-11%, depending on the platform) during ads was related to the brands featured in the ads themselves.

“Our study indicates that the television set is not only the most enjoyable of viewing platforms, but that its strength extends to the diagnostics of ad engagement,” said Tom Ziangas, SVP Research, AMC Networks and chair of the CRE’s Media Consumption and Engagement Committee. “It appears that in the world of ad engagement and recall, size really does matter. The challenge for content providers is to find ways to leverage the more personal experience viewers have with smaller screens.”

Peter Fondulas, Principal, Hub Entertainment Research, said, “The fact that viewers were equally engaged with program content, regardless of screen, suggests that there’s nothing inherent in the device itself that makes them less likely to pay attention to ads.

The more likely culprit for the lower ad engagement on smaller screens is an ad delivery approach that doesn’t align well with the expectations, and viewing situations, of consumers watching on mobile devices.”

 

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