Intensively Entertaining Commercials Ain’t All That

by Lauren Nohelty, Student at Babson College

In today’s advertising world, marketers are faced with the challenge of maximizing the effectiveness of television commercials, especially since the birth of the DVR, Netflix, Hulu and other TV tools. Audiences are no longer forced to watch ads in between segments of programming, which is great for viewers but bad for marketers. To combat this problem, advertisers have tried to make commercials more high energy and engaging in order to retain viewership. In fact, over 80% of television ads are classified as high energy. You know these commercials -- the ones that are bright, action-packed and typically upbeat. However, recent findings revealed that all these attempts to capture the audience, may in fact be turning them away.

Research conducted by Nancy Puccinelli (Oxford University), Keith Wilcox (Colombia University), and Dhruv Grewal (Babson College), has shown that the way consumers respond to advertisements is more closely related to the energy level of the media they are watching than previously considered. So what does this mean for the marketing industry and why should we care? The researchers performed five different studies on the relationship between the energy content of media and the energy level of the ads paired with them. Their conclusions are as follows.

Energy matters more than nature

Researchers found that it’s not the positive or negative nature of the show that impacts the consumers’ response, but instead the energy level. High energy TV programs like action movies or sitcoms activate your brain, so after watching a movie like the Avengers you will be more mentally alert. However, after watching low energy programming such as House of Cards, high energy commercials can be difficult for consumers to watch so they will actually spend less time paying attention to the commercials.

Consumers Have Lower Recall When the Energy Does Not Match

Commercials become difficult to process for your brain when the level of activation induced by the media content is highly discrepant with the energy in the commercial. So consumers that are in a somber state after watching House of Cards will have lower brand recall if they watch a Capital One ad afterwards. The reasoning behind this is because people have a harder time processing information when they transition from a task that is easy to process to one that is more difficult. Considering that the goal of advertising is often to increase brand awareness, it seems that these ads might not be hitting the mark.

Making Sure the Fit Is Right

Here’s the problem -- with streaming, viewers can now opt out of commercials, which is why advertisers tend to gravitate toward creating high energy commercials that are funny and engaging in order to keep their audience’s attention. However, research shows that this is only effective for roughly 60% of media that falls into the high energy category. The goal is to find a way to target the other 40% of media and deliver a message that works. Marketers are undermining themselves with this approach if the only goal is to catch the viewer’s attention through high energy presentations. Marketers need to consider the energy level, in addition to target demographics, because a person watching House of Cards is less likely to pay attention to an Axe commercial aired immediately after. 

Therefore, in order to maximize the effectiveness of TV ads, marketers need to selectively place their commercials. High energy commercials should be shown during high energy programming, such as sit-coms like Modern Family. Marketers should air moderate or low energy commercials during other types of shows, such as nature programs or news shows. All marketers should be taking this into consideration, especially since consumers have changed the way they watch television.

Article Citation:

Puccinelli, Nancy, Keith L. Wilcox and Dhruv Grewal (2015), “Consumers’ Response to Commercials: When the Energy Level in the Commercial Conflicts with the Media Context,” Journal of Marketing, 79 (March), 1-18.