Is it unjustified to say people don’t pay attention to advertising?

In response to Tess Alp’s comment – The potential for TV + mobile is something to celebrate not an excuse to carp – Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, uses Robert Heath’s work to support his original point: Whilst TV has hung onto eyeballs, TV advertising has lost the war for attention. Getting TV ads to cut through is a bigger challenge than ever…

“Carping is a great word but I wanted to check its precise definition – which seems to be that it means petty and unjustified criticism.

Is it really petty to point out the huge degree of multitasking that occurs whilst watching TV? It’s a significant fact about TV that doesn’t seem to get much coverage on the Thinkbox site.

Is it unjustified to say people don’t pay attention to advertising? We actually seem to agree on that one.

We also agree that Robert Heath’s seminal work on Low Involvement Processing is still a good model of how communications work.

I actually think his thinking explains the effectiveness of online advertising – remember Comscore and Dunn Humby have produced proof that online is just as effective as TV at driving sales of CPG products – at significantly lower cost.

And I’m sure we both agree that great creative AV can and does cut through – although I’d argue the focus is switching from paid media to earned media like YouTube… But you might think I’m carping again so lets bring another voice into the debate;

I predict that the… universal affair which advertisers have with television will eventually come to an end.

TV has survived the arrival of multi-channel mainly because of its supposed ability to get the attention of the consumer, but once it is realised how inefficient it is at doing this then people will start to examine the cost/return equation much more closely.

A significant number will realise that the simple messages and concepts can be communicated just as well in other media and the drain will start.

Recognise it? It’s by Robert Heath, from the summary of his paper on Low Involvement Processing. Maybe he’s carping too?

Peace Out.”