1.12.2011 Marketing and PR

Do Ads on TV Annoy You? Think Again, It’s Quite the Opposite!

Bartłomiej Dwornik

Advertisements don’t irritate viewers; instead, they increase the appeal of television programs, according to research published in the Polish edition of Harvard Business Review. Viewers are actually willing to pay more for shows they watched with ad breaks.

Television programs are more enjoyable when accompanied by ads, though viewers are often unaware of this. This surprising insight comes from studies conducted by professors Leif Nelson from Haas School of Business, Tom Meyvis from NYU`s Stern School, and Jeff Galak from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, who researched viewer preferences.

According to Harvard Business Review Polska, which published the study, two test groups were shown three types of programs:

• episodes of the comedy series *Taxi*,
• documentary nature films,
• and Bollywood productions.

One group watched the programs without ads, while the other saw them with ad interruptions. The results were surprising: the group that saw the shows with ads was more satisfied with the programs, regardless of the quality of the ads shown.

source: Harvard Business Review Polska, Why Do We Prefer TV with Ads?

Surprisingly, viewers who watched the version with ads were also willing to pay more for DVD sets of productions by the same directors. The study published by Harvard Business Review Polska found that this difference could be as much as 30%.

• viewers of the ad-free version offered $4.18 for a DVD
• viewers of the ad-supported version were willing to pay up to $5.42 for the same DVD.

The study authors note that this principle is reflected in pay TV, even though it doesn’t include ads. These networks structure their programming with built-in breaks.

- What increases viewer enjoyment isn’t the ads themselves but the breaks in the show, - explains Prof. Leif Nelson in an interview with HBRP. - In series, the plot usually consists of six or more parallel storylines that producers continuously juggle. More complex and unpredictable shows, with twists that naturally introduce breaks, were rated higher than programs with a more linear narrative structure.

This is known as the adaptation effect. The researchers found that this effect is much stronger among younger people. As people age, they need less stimulation to feel pleasure and adapt more slowly.

Nelson, Meyvis, and Galak`s research was also published in the Harvard Business Review Polska special report Why Do We Prefer TV with Ads?

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