With the increasing tendency among consumers to avoid television advertisements, the key question asked to ad agencies by their clients is: How to ensure returns on the money spent on advertisements? De facto ad avoidance is one of the biggest challenges, particularly with regard to television commercials. This article focuses on ad avoidance and the advertising strategies needed to overcome the same.

It is often quoted that an average American consumer is exposed to more than 3000 commercial messages per day, through various media. One study reports that only 7% of viewers give total attention to television commercials and 53% report divided attention. The overall situation is somewhat similar in most places across the world, including in India.

Discerning and time-deprived audience, the clutter of innumerable advertisements and the host of satellite channels have made ad agencies scramble to grab the attention of the target groups through their television commercials. The problem is further exacerbated when consumer spending is flagging and corporate ad budgets are shrinking during the economic slowdown.

Advertisement Avoidance (aA) in television commercials (TVC) refers to the behavior viewers exhibit towards advertisements due to constant airing of ads on the television media. Viewers typically display two types of behavior when it comes to avoiding advertisements on television. Either they actively avoid ads by skipping channels or muting during an ad break; or they do not pay any attention to the ad and divide or divert their attention to other activities like talking to someone, reading or doing chores during an ad break. The former behavior is known as active ad avoidance and the latter, passive ad avoidance.

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