Literature Review
Title: The duration viewers are willing to pay attention to advert
Television advertisement is a programme which is produced by an organization and paid availed for airing by a television network at the cost of the organization. Its message if designed to convey a message that promotes the use of a certain product. The income generated from the advertisements is very crucial in funding the operations of privately owned networks. From the year 2016, most of the TV commercials were conveyed in in a short time ranging from few seconds to some minutes. This advertisements form promoted the use of a wide range of products from the early time of the TVs introduction.
The influence of the television commercials on the viewers have been a topic for philosophical discourse by luminaries like marshal McLuhan. The number of viewers of the television programmes has been the basis for timing placement of television advertisements. This number of viewers also applies when it comes to determining the charges for the commercials by the television networks. Most of the advertisements are normally accompanied by attractive arts such as cartoons, jokes and music to get the viewers’ attention. Despite this some people still see the advertisements as nuisance especially when introduced in the middle of their favourite program Our study will focus the viewers by trying to find out how long they prefer the advertisements to last for them to be comfortable in viewing them.
The data was collected from a sample of 100 people who were obtained within the University. The respondents were cooperative and the interview with them was productive enough to yield the research data. The data was recorded in form interview notes during the data collection procedure and was further transferred into a table of frequency. Also, secondary sources were used to analyse the time factor concerning the time length of the television commercials.
Advertisement relies on the attention of the viewers to increase the market sales of the sponsoring company. Even though there are overall arguments that commercials can influence individuals without them paying attention to it but the study by the academic community through its study have concluded that for advertisement to be influential to consumers demand behaviour there need to be a form of attention on their half to the commercial. A greater attention to the advertisement is associated with a more effect on altering the purchasing behaviour (Teixeira, 2014).
To evaluate how an advertisement functions is a complex situation composed of several factors interacting such as the sender, message, receiver as well as the objective of the message. An advertisement is normally structured to consider the nature of content, how much attention it will attract and its persuasion capability. A simple model to show how this items work can be constructed by combining two of the factors i.e. the markers initially generate content before designing ways to capture the consumer attention. Afterwards the persuasion aspect is considered. The major goal is how to do all this cost effectively and how meeting the conditions will change the consumers demand habits in their favour. Traditional advertisements have been focused much on the cost aspect of it with little regard being given to the consumer attention. This has led to a trend where firms assume the consumers are paying attention to their message hence kind of forcing the content on them. But the reality on the ground differs strongly with this assumption.
Findings and Mathematical Analysis
Consumer time allocation to commercials
Consumer attention can be defined in terms of intensity and duration. The intensity measures the quality of the attention within a period, on the other hand duration reflects on the quantity. The quantity aspect is easier to determine compared to the quality. Evaluating the quality of time viewers give to a commercial is hard being that it depends on single individuals, product brand as well as context hence an option is to use the decision of the consumers to view the advert as a measurement of willingness to give attention to the advertisement.
From other research work which has been done from 2000 onwards the trend in ad-skipping rate can be evaluated across a magnitude of the population, brands and adverts. Initially all the ads which the consumers failed to skip by retaining the channel were taken to as viewed but improvement in technology have led to use of apparatus like eye tracking technology have been able to allow filtering consumers who simply turned away their attention form the advert without switching the television station. It’s surprising that this decreased the percentage of advertisements viewed from 97% to below 20%. this is a trend which other research work are approving to be true with people either switching the television station off, skipping the add or even just mentally tuning out as defined by multitasking (Amabile, 1996).
Most of the consumers while viewing television confessed to be doing other things as well. Majority are normally engaging their mobile phones to be in the social media platforms. The rise of the use of social media has been associated to have disengaged most viewers from the attention they use to allocate to the television viewing. This makes easier for them to switch their attention in cases of TV ads therefore further reducing the quality of the ad viewers’ attention. Most of the students interviewed confessed to be using their mobile phones at least once every hour.
Marketers are increasingly paying more and more to gain the attention of the consumers in the past decades. While on the other hand the quality of the attention to the product being purchased is continuously decreasing. To determine the actual cost of the attention then both the quantity and quality of attention are supposed to be considered in equal measure. This gives the indication that majority of the people who are exposed to the commercial fail to afford it any attention. Because the people who skip the advertisement are regarded to be of no value to the marketers then the effective of the commercials can be rated to be around 17% of the viewers
|
time length (minutes)(x) |
Frequency (f) |
fx |
|
|
0.1 |
2 |
0.2 |
2.56 |
|
0.2 |
2 |
0.4 |
2.25 |
|
0.4 |
3 |
1.2 |
1.69 |
|
0.5 |
2 |
1.0 |
1.44 |
|
0.6 |
5 |
3.0 |
1.21 |
|
0.7 |
4 |
2.8 |
1 |
|
0.8 |
3 |
2.4 |
0.81 |
|
0.9 |
5 |
4.5 |
0.64 |
|
1 |
6 |
6 |
0.49 |
|
1.1 |
4 |
4.4 |
0.36 |
|
1.2 |
4 |
4.8 |
0.25 |
|
1.3 |
8 |
10.4 |
0.16 |
|
1.4 |
4 |
5.6 |
0.09 |
|
1.5 |
3 |
4.5 |
0.04 |
|
1.6 |
2 |
3.2 |
0.01 |
|
1.7 |
3 |
5.1 |
0 |
|
1.8 |
2 |
3.6 |
0.01 |
|
1.9 |
4 |
7.6 |
0.04 |
|
2 |
4 |
8 |
0.09 |
|
2.1 |
2 |
4.2 |
0.16 |
|
2.2 |
5 |
11.0 |
0.25 |
|
2.3 |
2 |
4.6 |
0.36 |
|
2.4 |
2 |
4.8 |
0.49 |
|
2.5 |
2 |
5.0 |
0.64 |
|
2.6 |
3 |
7.8 |
0.81 |
|
2.7 |
2 |
5.4 |
1 |
|
2.8 |
2 |
5.6 |
1.21 |
|
2.9 |
2 |
5.8 |
1.44 |
|
3 |
2 |
6.0 |
1.69 |
|
3.1 |
1 |
3.1 |
1.96 |
|
3.2 |
1 |
3.2 |
2.25 |
|
3.3 |
1 |
3.3 |
2.56 |
|
3.4 |
1 |
3.4 |
2.89 |
|
3.5 |
1 |
3.5 |
3.24 |
|
3.6 |
1 |
3.6 |
3.61 |
From the data, the mean preferred time of advertisement is
On the other hand, the mode is given by observing the value of minutes with the most preferred viewers supporting it. In our case 1.3 minutes with the number of people preferring it at 8 is the mode of the data
Calculating the median which is the middle number we get 1.9 minutes
Conclusion
Now we find the variance using the formula
Averagely consumers are willing to listen to the advertisements for only 1.7 minutes this number is deviating with 0.614 minutes meaning commercials which are relayed within
giving it what we can term as 50% chance of being viewed chance of being watched fully by the consumers and the message relayed. Of concern is the 1.3 minutes’mode which is the time most of the views settled in to be comfortable in viewing the advertisement.
Based on our graphical presentation as the time taken to relay the adverts increases the number of viewers willing to pay attention to it continuously goes down up to a point then it levels. This level point can be interpreted to be due to the viewers who are loyalty to the station or are idle enough to give the advertisement attention.
Despite the fluctuation of the number of viewers with the duration of the commercial it is vital to note that most viewers will be comfortable with adverts which are relayed between 1 to 2 minutes.
Conclusions
Advertisers should therefore design there commercial between that duration to ensure the message is passed clearly to the viewers before they lose attention and switch to other stations or mentally switch of. As far as this time factor is concerned the television programming should also ensure the ads are not played subsequently for more than 2.5 minutes as from this duration only a few viewers will be remaining attentive for the ads message and hence the advertiser’s resources will have gone to waste.
It is upon the advertisers to utilise the little attention allocated to them effectively. For instance, when you only have 28% of the viewers watching your TV ad as shown in the data collected above consumers are contiously reducing the time they are willing to listen to the advertisements this is despite the increase in the number of TV viewers overtime. Even though the increase in TV viewing may seem something advantageous to the advertisers the decrease in the attention being accorded to ads is worrying as theymust continuously deduce more attractive ways to get viewers to observe their products.
Technology has introduced other media devices like telephones which have increased the consumer multitasking. This behaviour is one of the main explanations for the consumer skipping of TV ads as they can easily switch their attention to the other devices whenever an advert pops in the middle of their favourite programs.
The advertisements should be adjusted to boost the level of attention of the viewers. Some commercials cannot be relayed in the small-time limit that the viewers are according the commercials. This is due to the wide and elaborate nature of the content of the advertisement. Hence the advertisers need to increase the attention level before they can focus on the persuasion aspect of the commercial. This can be achieved using entertainment such as arts and social messages in between the ads. The level of entertainment contained within an art is approved way of increasing the quality of time the view are willing to accord an advertisement
The advertisers should also try seeking other alternative but effective ways to relay their message to try to reduce the poor attention the television viewers are offering. The rise of social media has opened a new avenue where most of the potential consumers spend their idle time. Since some of the time spent there is not restricted like the television viewers it is most likely to reach more viewers using the technique than it would in the use of the TV. Also, the use of social media is easier to control interms of the age of the viewers. The advert can be more directed to the group unlike the television which is more of family use.
References
Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in Context. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Teixeira, T. S. (2014). The Rising Cost of Consumer Attention: Why You Should Care, and What You Can Do about it. Harvard Business School.
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