The nation is hooked on watching people watch TV. Once you start watching Gogglebox, it’s hard to stop. Do we even know how we feel about XFactor, The last night of the Proms and This is England until we’ve heard from Sandy and Sandra, June and Leon and the inimitable, and wise beyond her years, Scarlett Moffatt?
The least authentic thing about the programme is the full concentration that every Gogglebox cast member pays to what is going on. They’re glued to the action on their TVs. They never pick up a second screen.
Unlike the rest of the nation.
TV is powerful, powerful for branding, powerful for story-telling, powerful for selling stuff. Commercial TV has been effective at selling product for 60 years. It has not got any less powerful in this respect as far as advertising effectiveness is concerned.
It is not any more (if it ever was after the 1950s) the single focus of most people’s attention most of the time.
YuMe research shows a 4 minute window for sole attention to TV amongst multi-screen viewers: 4 minutes when viewers pay all their attention to the main screen. Then that’s it. After 4 minutes viewing attention to TV drops as people turn to other devices. TV is the most used device still in multi-screen environments. It just doesn’t necessarily receive most of the attention. And Touchpoints 5 shows that half of the UK population picks up their mobile device whilst watching TV.
Should we change our approach to TV in this new normal?
TV is fuel to lots of conversations and great advertising benefits from this. If you’re worried that multi-screening stops ad recall then don’t be. Thinkbox studies show that it absolutely does not.
Here are two techniques that any planner can use to drive TV effectiveness still further in this new TV normal.
First by influencing creative strategy. Often the ambition of an ad campaign is to make the advertising as talked about as the programmes either by being emotionally epic, or by shouting rather loudly. We must now consider whether the focus for advertising effort should in fact be to create some kind of memorability whilst not being the main focus of attention.
Jingles and repeated slogans/memes would help with this. Especially if it true that our attention spans are shrinking. Microsoft have told us that we have lost 4 seconds of focus since 2000 when we could focus for a whole 12 seconds. (Now it’s just 8). Does this mean we should constantly change the messages and change them fast? The solution might be the very opposite, ie heavy repetition of the same meme rather than constantly refreshing it.
The second way is by harnessing mobile devices to complement the big screen, use of content and ads to reinforce the TV message and potentially to complete the sales journey immediately.
MediaCom research showed multi-tasking while watching TV was always highly prevalent long before the days when everyone sitting in front of the big screen had another screen or two to hand. Back at the turn of the century breakthrough ethnographic research came up with a multitude of other behaviours that played out in front of the telly ranging from reading the newspaper to beauty treatments. Back then all we could do was quantify them by programme type to pick the best spots. Now we know so much more about what everyone is doing. We can build a 360 degree real time view of TV viewers and what they are up to. With this perspective we can design integrated on and offline screen campaigns that improve advertising effectiveness for the four minute window and beyond.
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on Friday, October 9th, 2015 at 10:36 am and is filed under MediaComment.
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2 by 4: 2 ways to deal with the 4 minute rule.
The least authentic thing about the programme is the full concentration that every Gogglebox cast member pays to what is going on. They’re glued to the action on their TVs. They never pick up a second screen.
Unlike the rest of the nation.
TV is powerful, powerful for branding, powerful for story-telling, powerful for selling stuff. Commercial TV has been effective at selling product for 60 years. It has not got any less powerful in this respect as far as advertising effectiveness is concerned.
It is not any more (if it ever was after the 1950s) the single focus of most people’s attention most of the time.
YuMe research shows a 4 minute window for sole attention to TV amongst multi-screen viewers: 4 minutes when viewers pay all their attention to the main screen. Then that’s it. After 4 minutes viewing attention to TV drops as people turn to other devices. TV is the most used device still in multi-screen environments. It just doesn’t necessarily receive most of the attention. And Touchpoints 5 shows that half of the UK population picks up their mobile device whilst watching TV.
Should we change our approach to TV in this new normal?
TV is fuel to lots of conversations and great advertising benefits from this. If you’re worried that multi-screening stops ad recall then don’t be. Thinkbox studies show that it absolutely does not.
Here are two techniques that any planner can use to drive TV effectiveness still further in this new TV normal.
First by influencing creative strategy. Often the ambition of an ad campaign is to make the advertising as talked about as the programmes either by being emotionally epic, or by shouting rather loudly. We must now consider whether the focus for advertising effort should in fact be to create some kind of memorability whilst not being the main focus of attention.
Jingles and repeated slogans/memes would help with this. Especially if it true that our attention spans are shrinking. Microsoft have told us that we have lost 4 seconds of focus since 2000 when we could focus for a whole 12 seconds. (Now it’s just 8). Does this mean we should constantly change the messages and change them fast? The solution might be the very opposite, ie heavy repetition of the same meme rather than constantly refreshing it.
The second way is by harnessing mobile devices to complement the big screen, use of content and ads to reinforce the TV message and potentially to complete the sales journey immediately.
MediaCom research showed multi-tasking while watching TV was always highly prevalent long before the days when everyone sitting in front of the big screen had another screen or two to hand. Back at the turn of the century breakthrough ethnographic research came up with a multitude of other behaviours that played out in front of the telly ranging from reading the newspaper to beauty treatments. Back then all we could do was quantify them by programme type to pick the best spots. Now we know so much more about what everyone is doing. We can build a 360 degree real time view of TV viewers and what they are up to. With this perspective we can design integrated on and offline screen campaigns that improve advertising effectiveness for the four minute window and beyond.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2015 at 10:36 am and is filed under MediaComment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.