For the fourth year in a row, Marketing and Leger Marketing have conducted an in-depth study of media saturation and the Canadian public’s acceptance of advertising techniques. Last year, we saw a minor increase in the percentage of Canadians that felt specific advertising techniques were acceptable. This acceptance was against a backdrop of Canadians saying they were always exposed to ads and felt they were seeing more and more advertising in their daily lives. This year, we see continued exposure, but something new is happening when it comes to acceptance.
For this study, we once again surveyed 1,500 Canadians using our national omnibus service, looking at their attitudes toward advertising and specific techniques. The results of this survey are accurate to within +/- 2.6%, 19 times out of 20.
As more and more media becomes available to us through podcasts, online video sites like YouTube, satellite radio, and digital television stations that run into the hundreds, Canadians definitely feel the amount of advertising is growing considerably. Most Canadians (86%) feel there is more advertising now compared to 10 years ago. This is a fairly large and compelling number, but it is even more significant when we mention that only 1% of Canadians feel there are fewer ads. These 19 people (out of the 1,500 surveyed) keep advertising executives up at night, because they are no longer noticing what you’re doing. Fortunately, given the accuracy of a poll this size, these people are considered statistically irrelevant-so we can pretty much say that “virtually nobody” is seeing fewer ads.
All this increased exposure would be a bad scenario for the future of advertising if people were upset about the exposure. We can imagine scores of angry newspaper readers rising out of subway tunnels carrying pitchforks and surrounding top advertising offices if we continued to expose them to more and more advertising content. (Much to the chagrin of a few, this is not the case; although, it would be fun to see angry newspaper readers surrounding certain ad agencies that will remain nameless.)
Sixty-five percent of Canadians feel that the level of advertising they are exposed to is acceptable. Last year, a similar percentage of Canadians (64%) told us that they found the current level of advertising acceptable. Each year, we have seen an increase in the number of ads that we are exposed to, but we are consistently seeing two-thirds of Canadians saying the level of advertising exposure is fine. Good news for advertisers.
Over the years we have also looked at individual advertising tactics and whether Canadians felt they were acceptable. This year, the surprise result is that Canadians are significantly more accepting of almost every tactic.
Acceptance of newspaper ads is up by 12%, acceptance of transit ads is up by 13%, and acceptance of television advertising is up by 8%. Almost all tactics-whether it be product placement, radio or even online banner ads- showed increased acceptance. Even new techniques that we are measuring for the first time this year are testing respectably. Digital in-store video is accepted by over two-thirds (69%) of Canadians, while digital billboards are acceptable to almost half of Canadians (47%). The one ad tactic Canadians still find unacceptable is pop-up ads. Only 14% of Canadians feel this is an acceptable tactic-placing it at the bottom of our list.
This increased awareness and acceptance is good news, and not just because we have more ways to “hit” the Canadian population with ads. Ads appear to be grabbing our attention. For the second straight year, we are seeing more and more ads discussed in our monthly Leger Ad Track published in Marketing.
A few years back, we would have had more than 40% of Canadians saying they could not name a television ad that stood out for them because they particularly liked or hated it. This number has since dwindled to half that, with a significantly higher percentage of Canadians naming ads they like than ads they dislike.
So, once again we are left with the realization that Canadians see and are impacted by many, many ads every day. Has saturation hit us? Not yet. Let’s see again next year.
DAVE SCHOLZ is vice-president of Leger Marketing in Toronto
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