Sunday, July 24, 2016

Forbes article reinforces that we are exposed to 3,000 Ads per day

How many advertisements do we each see every day? We know it is a lot. Just look around at the brand names and corporate images within eyesight of you right now. The number that is quoted and written time and time again is 3,000 advertisements per day. However, it is a number not supported by research. It is a number that has become a statistic by repetition. For example:

In a recent (JUL 20, 2016) article, "How Brands Should Use Celebrities For Endorsements" Forbes Magazine contributor Steve Olenski, writes about how companies are turning to celebrity endorsement to breakthrough ad clutter:

"According to Ad Age, a brand that inks an endorsement contract with a celebrity or an athlete can see their stock rise up to .25 as soon as the news is made public. ... The same article claims that on average, audiences are exposed to some 3,000 advertisements today across all media, leading to an element of marketing overexposure. Studies have shown that advertisements that use a celebrity, about whom many people already have positive feelings and impulses, grab an audience’s attention more easily than a standard ad."

If you follow the link you will see that Dean Crutchfield of Ad Age writes (September 22, 2010):

"There is the issue of overexposure to consider. We receive more than 3,000 commercial images a day; our subconscious absorbs more than 150 images and roughly 30 reach our conscious mind. Therefore, practice has it that if you use a celebrity-endorsement strategy, you dramatically accelerate the potential for your brand to reach the conscious mind of the consumer, especially given research from Weber Shandwick that finds peer endorsement trumps advertising."
So why 3,000? Why not 76 or 1,518 or 1,724?