Ad avoidance and the TV audience

Mike Bloxham and Michelle Prieb, of the Center for Media Design at Ball State University, show that non-exposure to an advertisement is often more about the viewer satisfying some other need than consciously and actively rejecting advertising.

Ad avoidance and the TV audience

Mike Bloxham and Michelle Prieb

The issue of ad avoidance is as old as advertising itself and applies across all media where advertising is deployed. Although today we typically discuss it in terms of television, 200 years ago, many readers who were eager for the news of the day would open their newspapers with barely a glance at the front pages, stuffed as they were with classified ads offering anything from land, clothing and passage to far-off countries to education for their children, governesses and the finest riding boots.

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