Multi-screening does not diminish TV ad recall

UK — Viewers pay more attention to ads than they think and multi-screening does not negatively affect ad recall, according to new Thinkbox research.

The research – Screen Life: TV advertising everywhere – carried out by Thinkbox alongside Craft Strategy, the marketing body for TV in the UK, found that while participants qualitatively denied remembering many TV ads, quantitative mobile diary studies showed the average viewer could remember 1.9 ads for every 15 minutes of viewing. People who had multi-screened during TV ad breaks ( 74% of the study’s mobile diary sample) could recall 2 ads per 15 minutes.

The research also found that the longer people watched TV, the more likely they were to explicitly remember a TV ad from the previous 15 minutes.

The study gathered data via video ethnography, EyeCams, mobile viewing diaries, workshops and an online survey of 2,023 people in the UK.