In a world with digital media on the rise, internet advertising is generally expected to be expertly capturing the new era’s audiences (especially the young generations) and rising above the more traditional communications such as TV and print media (Danaher & Rossiter, 2011). However, I cannot help but ponder on the problem that Danaher and Rossiter (2011) mentioned in their article: has internet advertising reached an irritation point? What does this mean for marketers/advertisers?
As digital devices and the internet place integrate deeply into our daily life, electronic media channels have approached us in their entirety. In North America, 8 out of 10 people from 18 years old own a cell phone and about 7 out of 10 teenagers do (Johnson as cited in Danaher & Rossiter, 2011). In the modern workplace, email is an indispensable part. This phenomenon creates huge exposure from the audiences towards different types of online communications/ advertising, including internet banner ads, online TVC, e-mail and blogs, etc. Younger consumers are the group with the highest exposure to digital marketing communications due to their “tech-savvy” behavior (Danaher & Rossiter, 2011).
Nevertheless, internet advertising might be having a backfire effect on marketers, despite its convenience and big exposure. Danaher and Rossiter (2011) suggest that the more communications consumers receive from a channel, the less likely they will respond. This applies to the digital channels, as flooding advertising and marketing efforts trying to grab the online audiences’ attention have driven them to an irritation threshold (Dreze & Hussherr as cited in Danaher & Rossiter, 2011). Thus, the ads which aim to draw consumers’ interests and engagement, actually bother the consumers. This might be an explanation of why younger people’s engagement with online communications is just as low as previous generations, despite their substantial usage of digital media (Danaher & Rossiter, 2011).
The online advertising’s problem of high exposure but low engagement is proved by numbers from a real study by HubSpot.com. Survey shows that more than 70% online browsers in the US and Europe dislike online pop-ups and mobile phone ads. Other online marketing communications types such as online TVC, Facebook ads gain 40 to 50% disapproval, as shown in Figure 1. Due to the large increase in ads number within the recent years as well as the progressively intrusive nature of today’s internet adverts (An, 2016), internet users now resort to ignoring ads (46%) or even filtering/blocking them (83%). These behaviors can be classified as selective exposure (filtering/blocking) (Farney, 2016) and selective attention (ignoring). In fact, selective exposure behavior of internet users has become so significant that it gave birth to various ad blocking services, such as Adblock (An, 2016). In short, selective exposure and attention are negatively affecting the engagement level of online ads viewers.
Online adverts demonstrated in Figure 2 and Figure 3 are actual examples of how irritating internet advertising can be, which explains why the audiences are pushed to the irritation threshold. Ads on display are usually either too many (figure 2), or disruptive towards the main content (figure 3). As a result, audiences choose to ignore or to block them: 64% people using ad blockers (selective exposure) because ads are annoying/intrusive, while 54% use them to avoid adverts disrupting what they are doing (An, 2016). Decreasing engagement from consumers means that internet advertising is falling in effectiveness altogether.
So, what can marketers do in response to this trend? Danaher and Rossiter (2011) remarked that compared to the internet, consumers find traditional communication channels such as TV ads and print media not just more established and reliable, but also more pleasurable to see. Danaher and Rossiter's research indicates that mass media (radio, magazine, newspapers) and print direct mails (catalog, customized mail) are most effective in creating purchase intention. Perhaps it should occur to contemporary marketers that the new media channels like the internet are not always the best answer, and the old channels like TV and catalog might not yet be out-of-time in the modern era.
References
An, M. (2016). Why People Block Ads (And What It Means for Marketers and Advertisers). HubSpot. [online]. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/news-trends/why-people-block-ads-and-what-it-means-for-marketers-and-advertisers#LINK1
Farney, R., M. (2016). The Influence Exposure Has on Consumer Behavior. CMC Senior Theses. Paper 1251.
Danaher, P., J., Rossiter, J., R. (2011). Comparing perceptions of marketing communication channels. European Journal of Marketing, 45(1/2), 6-42. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/03090561111095586