P.M. Prescott’s comment on this post reminded me of an issue I’ve wanted to write about on here for a while: TV commercials. Are they worth it?
I almost always mute commercials when they come on, unless they’re for something I am already interested in. I can’t think of any time in my life when I’ve decided to buy something just because I saw a commercial for it. I generally research any major purchases first.
And then there are the commercials for small things, like soft drinks. Maybe other people are different, but I don’t see those commercials and go “well, I’ve just got to go buy a [X soft drink] right now.” My soft drink purchase decisions are made purely on the basis of what’s most convenient; I don’t care about brands enough to spend extra time hunting down a particular drink.
Some say that commercials work subliminally. Well, maybe. But how effective can the ads be when they produce no noticeable change in my behavior? Even if it’s subliminal, I would notice that I suddenly had a desire to go out and buy particular things.
Especially interesting to me are political ads. (With which we are about to be deluged, incidentally) Is anybody really going to vote based on what a TV ad said? I just assume that all political ads are telling half-truths at best, and so I tune them out automatically.
Given all that, I have to think that companies are overpaying for ads. The return on it can’t be that much, can it? I think a company gets more benefit from announcing at the beginning of a program that they are sponsoring the whole thing without commercial interruption than they do from advertising during it. Because, in general, commercials annoy the viewer who is just trying to watch something.