HOW MANY ADVERTISEMENTS IS A PERSON
EXPOSED TO IN A DAY?
For more than thirty-five years journalists have
been kicking around the number 1,518, variously
stated as “1,600,” “2,000,” “between 1,500 and
1,600,” and recently exaggerated to “up to 3,000.”
These numbers are unsubstantiated, and the
citations never get more specific than “experts
agree.” Experts certainly do not agree—on that
number or any other number.
The source for the number 1,518 was a remark
made by Edwin Ebel, then Vice President in charge
of advertising at General Foods, in a speech in
1957. Wanting a high number to emphasize a point,
Ebel had conducted a little “research” of his own—
all pretty much speculation. Journalists jumped on
the number, which was supposed to represent ad
exposures for a whole family of four, and it quickly
became “the number of advertisements an
individual is exposed to every day.”
So what is the real number?
Experts may not agree, but they have been
interested in the question and have conducted
surveys.
We sponsored a study in 1964, which was carried
out by Bauer and Greyser and reported in 1968 in
Advertising in America:
The Consumer View. As part of the study, about
750 people were asked to count the ads they noted
from the time they got up in the morning until 5:00
P.M., and another group of 750 people were asked to
count ads from 5:00 P.M. until they went to bed.
If “exposure” means you paid attention to the ad
...
These “exposures,” as defined for the people who
were to count them, were advertisements to which
they paid at least some attention in four major
media: magazines, newspapers, radio and
television—but not other media. The average
number for the wake-up to 5:00 P.M. group was 36.3
advertisements; for the 5:00 P.M. to nod-off group it
was 39.6. For a full waking day, that would give a
total of 76 advertisements of which a person is to
some degree aware.
Charles F. Adams, working with the Bauer and
Greyser data in 1965, emphasized that of the 76
advertisements a day of which a person might be
aware, only 12 made any kind of impression on
him, and three of those impressions were negative.
If “exposure” means you could have
paid attention . . .
Adams estimated that the average American—
reading one and a half newspapers, half a magazine
and one piece of direct mail, and listening to 2.3
hours of radio and watching 3.8 hours of TV—
would be exposed to a minimum of 560
advertisements in a 16-hour period.
Looking at the amount of advertising in media . .
.
BBDO’s Robert Wachsler came up with some
different numbers in 1970, but without stating his
exact methodology. He’s quoted
in the December 1972 Journal of Advertising
Research as saying “We laid out all available media
usage data that we had—e.g., television, radio
tuning hour by hour, percentage of a book (sic) seen
during the average reading, etc., etc. Against these
time segments and reading proportions we placed
the number of scheduled ad messages.” His results
led him to expect the average male to be exposed to
285 ads a day, and the average female, 305. His
numbers included outdoor advertising as well as the
other four major media.
Plotting individual demographics against a
database . . .
Stuart Henderson Britt, Stephen C. Adams and
Allan S. Miller, in their 1972 study, started with this
question: “How many advertisements is an
individual exposed to during an average day?”
Rather than try to look at an “average individual”—
a somewhat meaningless term—they designed a
study using a computerized database in which they
could query for an individual. How many
advertisements is Mrs. Real Person exposed to
during an average day? By inputting an actual
person’s demographic characteristics, their
computer model plotted (predicted) ad exposures
per day. In their Milwaukee metropolitan area test
run, ad exposures for males ranged from 117 to 285
per day, and for females, 161 to 484. The higher
exposure for females showed up especially clearly
for housewives. The researchers were impressed by
the remarkable consistency of their results no matter
how many individuals’ demographics they input to
their database.
If none of the above numbers is to your liking . . .
According to a comScore Ad Matrix report cited by
Media Dynamics, the average Internet user was
exposed to over 6000 display ads over the course of
the third quarter of 2010, or 65-66 ads potentially
seen per day. Since about two-thirds of the total
adult population use the Internet, the per capita
exposure rate is 44-45 ads per day.
Media Dynamics estimates that on average only 1520% of Internet display ads are noted, so a typical
adult may see only eight Internet display ads daily.
This is less than a person’s exposure to TV
commercials where it is estimated that about 125
screen messages are “watched” but only 66 are at
least partially noted.
What are all those numbers again?
1,518 exposures per day for a family of four (Ebel;
1957)
76 noticed exposures (Bauer/Greyser; 1964)
560 whether noticed or not (Adams; 1965)
285 for men, 305 for women (BBDO’s Wachsler;
1970)
117 to 285 for men, 161 to 484 for women (Britt et
al; 1972)
44-45 per capita exposures to Internet display ads
per day. Only 15-20% of Internet display ads are
noted, or about eight ads daily. About 125 TV
messages are “watched”, but only 66 are noted.
(Media Matters, 2011)
Magna Global estimates a 15% growth in exposures
from 950 in 2009 to 1205 in 2013, including 741
out-of-home exposures.
And another thought . . .
Dr. J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich, Inc.,
said that “it’s important not to get caught up in the
exact numbers. Rather, just use the numbers to get
a qualitative feel for the issue.”
He added that the bottom line is that “clutter is not
an urban myth. The exact number may be hard to
agree on, but it is an exponentially higher number
with every passing decade. It’s a clutter of ad
exposure that runs head on into the ever-constant
cognitive capacities of humans.” (J. Walker Smith,
blog posting, January 2008)
Video ads
According to Ooyala, the typical viewer sees one
video ad per 24 hours on a given domain or
application. This trend suggests huge untapped
potential; online video publishers can grow revenue
by increasing ad load.
Mobile ads
A study by ABI Research reports that 11% of
consumers with smart phones interact with ads once
a day or more; 14% do so a few times weekly. 24%
of tablet users interact with ads once a day or more;
23% do so a few times per week.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABI Research, “Mobile’s Role in Consumers’
Media Day”, July 2012. http://bit.ly/NF8wgv
Adams, Charles F., Common Sense in Advertising,
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965.
Bauer, Raymond A. and Stephen A. Greyser,
Advertising in America: The Consumer View.
Boston: Division of Research, Graduate School of
Business Administration, Harvard University, 1968.
Britt, Steuart Henderson, Stephen C. Adams and
Allan S. Miller, “How Many Advertising Exposures
per Day?” Journal of Advertising Research, Dec.
1972, pp.3-9.
Lee, Henry, “General Foods’ Edwin W. Ebel,”
Madison Avenue, Nov. 1962, p. 24+.
Magna Global, “Media Economy Report”, vol. 1,
June 2012.
“What is Our Real Exposure to Internet Ads,”
Media Matters, April 1, 2011.
Ooyala, “Global Video Index Report, Q1 2012.
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