Monday, September 11, 2006

The average American is exposed to...

In his blog, Publicity Times, Mr. Lonny Kocina reports that his Google research confirms, "that 97% of all statistics are made up on the spot." He writes that the numbers on advertising impressions range from a low of 247 to a high of 4,000. He was curious as to where the 3,000 number comes from but decided (in jest) to settle on his own number of 1,724 as he thought it was more believable.

Another reference to 3,000 advertisements

Referred to as a "flood", the number 3,000 advertisements appears in a 2001 Accenture whitepaper: Customer Segment Management: Moving One Step Closer to Nirvana ( http://tinyurl.com/hdznx). The paper argues companies need to adopt a customer-centric business model for three reasons: a flood of competing messages; ever-rising customer expectations; and mounting financial pressures.

The authors, Clive Whitehouse, Ruth E. Spencer and Michael Payne, suggest that the number of commercial messages competing for a customer's attention has risen to 3,000 per day in the US in 2000 up from 650 in 1985. They do not indicate their source of this information. This the change represents a 350% growth over 15 years. As you can see by the chart, the change in traditional media messages represents a 293% growth over this period.

Friday, September 01, 2006

The average American adult is aware of 76 advertisements a day in the major media

Two respected academics, reported in their book, Advertising in America: The Consumer View (1968), the average adult is aware of 76 ads each day. The authors, Stephen A. Greyser and Raymond A. Bauer, based their findings on interviews and a counting study with more than 1,500 adult individuals. Study participants were asked to count each advertisement in major media (magazines, newspapers, radio and television) to which he or she paid at least some attention.