Surprising fact: Television advertisements can work in fast-forward

I often wonder if TV adverts work any more. Not in the sense ‘is advertising effective’ but because I watch so many things on catch up TV or by using my remote to fast forward, I rarely seem to watch the ads. I was interested to read in The Economist how back in the 1980s, marketers could be certain of reaching 90% of American households with an advertisement on prime-time network television. Now they would be lucky to reach a third. But research has come to light that suggests that it is still possible to get your message across on television, even when a viewer has his finger on the fast-forward button.

The article explains how researchers noticed that when people fast-forward they actually concentrate intensely on the screen, looking out for the end of the advertising break so that they can get back to their programme. This means they are probably paying more attention than they would if the advertisements were playing normally. Their study, published in the Journal of Marketing, showed that, even when the volunteers fast-forwarded ads, they could still be influenced by brand images that appeared for only a fraction of a second.

It turns out that the fast-forwarded ads that work best are those that contain little information and are simply intended to reinforce awareness of a brand - so when you start to see TV ads in which the brand image takes centre stage, you can guess why.