The challenge of ad avoidance

Andrew Ingram

Andrew Ingram, director of the Aerials Foundation at the UK Radio Advertising Bureau, describes a new research study to investigate the implications of advertising avoidance for 'outreach' media planning (outreach ads are those that people sense are unlikely to be relevant or interesting).

The challenge of ad avoidance

Andrew Ingram

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused.

Dr Johnson, January 1759

As this quote shows, advertising avoidance has been with us for a long time, and is a natural human response to information overload.

Recently, concerns about advertising avoidance have been increasing, as media proliferate and the competition for 'share of eyeball' becomes more intense.

Some useful research into advertising avoidance was carried out by Initiative Media during the mid-1990s. This combined a wide variety of different methods and focused on ways that advertisers could overcome avoidance, mainly of...

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