That Slope Is Just Getting Slipperier

George Simpson

As if air pollution, astronomical real estate prices and the possibility of running into The Donald weren't reason enough to sprint to suburbia, here comes this news item from a New York Times story: "Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today."

Since the story was about place-based ads, one assumes the 5,000 messages don't include those we encounter in media--which, you will recall from earlier Over The Line dispatches, is where we bury our noses for about three hours a day. A single network prime-time TV show now has 634 ads per hour (956 if you count the promos they scroll under or paste over the content itself). The only good news is that ads are continuing to disappear from your newspapers and magazines. The bad news is that when they lose those cool auto ads, magazines replace them with cheapo, classified-looking ads from the retail equivalent of penis and breast enhancement creams, crapping up their layouts and just adding to the clutter.

But the bottom line is that overloading consumers with ads to the point that they can't sit quietly in a toilet stall without having to see commercial messages just puts them further over the edge, so they just hate the ad industry more than ever and forget how useful (and occasionally entertaining) ads can be to their lives.

Like everyone else, I have online ad blockers and I fast-forward through TV shows I have recorded. I either change channels during live TV commercials--or hit the mute and read a magazine for the duration of the break. (Given the length of most newsmagazine stories now, I can nearly complete an entire issue in two pods). I never listen to commercial radio anymore, since their ads are THE MOST obnoxious of all media. I am happy to pay for XM, which I listen to in the car and almost all day online. I only look at newspaper ads that have SALE in big letters plastered across them. ANYTHING related to advertising that comes in the mail (no matter how cleverly or deceptively designed to get me to open it) is dumped unread into the trash. In other words, I am a pretty typical consumer.

But at least I acknowledge that I love ads that are relevant to what I am in the market for on any given day. I don't really care which medium delivers them to me, either (except that online has spoiled me with instant gratification, so if a print or TV ad asks me to dial a number or go to a store, our love affair pretty much ends right then and there.)

I grew up on the premise that advertising was a form of information, and therefore useful for the consumer. But as ad exposure has climbed beyond the 5,000 units a day, the contest to gain my attention has resulted in the pollution of most urban landscapes, TV screens, print layouts and my computer screen. There was a story yesterday about a woman who produces some of the Internet's most annoying ads, which use constant motion to get your attention. While some might see her as a kind of ad industry folk-hero for producing ads that seem to work for her client, I suspect most consumers would rather she be drawn and quartered in Iraqi justice system-time.

I appreciate that one man's "best ad of the year" is the next man's "if-I-see-that-goddamned-spot-one-more-time-I-will-pitch-the-plasma-out-the-door," and that at the end of the day, it all comes down to what moves product out the door, but I would not underestimate consumer backlash to too-many-ads-trying-too-hard-to-get-my-attention. I know people who won't buy from companies just because they got a telemarketing call from them, or hate seeing the same ads run during every college bowl and pro playoff game. OK, it's me. But I am not alone (I don't think).

Too many in the ad industry chuckle when people in focus groups say they hate ads--but then go out and buy the product anyway. But all we've done is foster a resentment that will be reflected in enhanced electronic measures to avoid ads at all. Including the ones that we might have really wanted to see.