Early Rumors of Commercial’s Death Greatly Exaggerated

January 7th, 2009

It’s a commonplace on the Internet that the traditional 30-second TV spot is dying. What with increasing media fragmentation, the new “attention economy,” and TiVo/DVR’s, etc, etc.

Of course, there have always been some level-headed voices of dissent, but it was still interesting to read this bit of research on the effectiveness of fast-forwarded / DVR-ed ads.

Turns out that viewers have to pay attention to their TV Screens in order to fast forward through ads. A real shocker that one, but hey, that means the viewer is actually seeing the ad (rather than running to the fridge for a snack) and that, properly formatted, these fast-forwarded ads can still influence viewers.

The trick was simply to keep the important brand images and information in the center of the screen as the task-focused fast-forwarding viewer was unlikely to see anything else.

So does this have anything to do with Websites?

Well, keep in mind that most Web visitors are also task-focused and unlikely to pay much attention to peripheral information. So keep your important information, calls-to-action, and controls in the center window, otherwise, visitors may not see them in their “fast-forward” movement through your site.

PS Don’t forget to join us for our Free Webinar with guest Jim Sterne: 2009 is Our Year to Shine. Even if you can’t attend, please register to be notified when the play back is available.

In Advertising, Breaking News, Improving Conversion, Technology, Web Design, eyetracking

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Comments (5)

Ian Brodie | Sales Blogger
January 7th, 2009
8:39 am

Hi Jeff,

The findings are interesting and instructive for TV ads – but I’d be wary of applying them to the web. There are so many directly applicable studies using eye-tracking and other methods for analysing how people actually view websites that it’s pretty pointless to draw analogies from a different media.

Ian
Leif Kendall
January 7th, 2009
8:46 am

We normally mute adverts at home (partly because they’re just too loud for our sensitive ears) but we still watch them! Quite stupid, probably. So we don’t hear what they’re saying but we probably think about them more as a result – as we try to decipher the ad sans sound.
Jeff
January 7th, 2009
12:41 pm

Ian,

I agree that the analogy is a bit of a stretch, but it IS true that both sets of audiences are task focused and therefore display similar behavior. In fact, the available eye-tracking and usability studies that you refer to do back up my recommendations.

But your sentiment is well taken: why guess when you can know for sure?

- Jeff
The TV ad most definitely is not dead « Figure It Out
January 10th, 2009
1:00 pm

[...] Posted on January 10, 2009 by scottmalish Jeff Sexton at FutureNow wrote an interesting blog post that I thought I’d add my two cents on. He caught an interesting article reporting research [...]
Brett Gilbertson
January 12th, 2009
8:16 pm

Nice headline Jeff… but to me if we need to redesign ads to be watched in fast forward, it actually proves that they are dying.

Of course they won’t really ever die, they will just continue to wither.

Agree with your application to web though. The active window is key to conversion.