"Each of us sees more ads in one year than people of 50 years ago saw in an entire lifetime."
-- DMNews magazine, 12-22-97
How many advertisements will the average person see or hear each day? 
That is an interesting question. I posed this question to the Wizard of Ads Partners and received back some interesting comments.
How many ads really are bombarded onto the average American these days?
Boy! That depends on a lot of things. Every source has a little bit different numbers and I looked at about 20 different sources.
I read where the average person now see´s ads on TV and the Internet, hears Radio ads, sees pop ups, passes billboards, see logos, ads on programs, ads at the little league games, you name it up to about 5000 per day. Several places in my research claimed between 500 to 1000 and 5000; but I just can hardly believe that. I’m originally from Missouri, the Show me State; so somebody would have to show me for me to believe it.
I am positive the average American today is confronted with somewhere between 500 and 5,000 advertisements of some sort. That makes it almost impossible for the ad for my business & your business to get through all that advertising clutter. I am always advising business owners how to get the best bang for their buck. One of the best ways to do that would be to hire a good writer. All the writers at Wizard of Ads are growing their clients businesses by doing a good Uncovery first. A great ad comes from a great Strategy and from the Strategy comes from the Uncovery.
The Wizard of Ads Partners are doing some Free Uncovery Meetings in 3 locations this spring for selected business.
I am hosting the one in St Louis April 5th.
Steve Rae is hosting one in Canada. The Uncovery event in Canada is scheduled for April 21 & 22 in Stratford.
Charlie Moger is hosting one in Houston. Charlie has set April 14-15 as the date for the Houston - Gulf Coast Uncovery.
Wizard Partner Charlie Moger sent me this:
“Clay,
I was driving the kids to school when your question came in. So, my typing was not as quick (especially in those school zones) as Jeff's--who is probably sitting there in his slippers and robe savoring his third or fourth fresh-brewed cup of coffee, delivered with a kiss by his lovely wife.
I found a bunch of answers for you, but I like this one best for its angle of approach:
“This statistic is only used for "hype" purposes, usually to portray
advertsing as some kind of social evil. The Guru has recently heard
numbers cited between 3,000 and 20,000. These numbers are ludicrous.
When challenged, those citing them will hedge and say they meant
"informational messages" or some such and include product lables
passed in a grocery store. The only way to get a total this high is to
do exposure counting by a methood that would include, for example the
idea that when a person turns the pages in a newspaper's classified
section he is exposed to all 500 ads that might be on each spread of
those pages.
When considering these silly numbers, it is best to stop
and think: a person is usually only awake for about 1000 minutes per
day. If they did nothing else but look at or listen to adverstising,
it would take every minute of the day to generate 3000 exposures. A
number aound 500 might be a reasonable extreme, again counting as
exposure all the out-of-home media passed, and small space ads in
newspapers and magazines,even thought there may be no notice taken at
all."
"Clay you can see the above and a page full of others with
attributing links.
Hope it helps. Charlie.
BTW: Just kidding, Jeff. I'm sure you made your own coffee."
;0)
I found this quote interesting from a one year college study from 11 years ago;
and I am convinced it’s a lot higher now. I don’t know by how much though and
I don’t think anyone else knows for absolutely sure except Jesus.
"The average American is exposed to approximately 1,000 commercial messages a day (Arens 1999).
That's 365,000 messages that you will view this year."
- University of Washington
My Partner Ray Seggern had this comment:
Clay,
Here is a good place to start if you need some sources.
Ray Seggern
(I believe you can find anything on Google )
My Partner Jeff Sexton had this comment:
Clay,
"Roy (Williams) went over this at Partner meeting a year or so ago. If memory
serves, the original 3000 number was given by Ries and Trout in their book, Positioning.
Since then, I believe the research has been repeated and the number was updated
to 5000.
Where you get a discrepancy between those people citing numbers in the 300-800
range and those citing numbers in the 3000-5000 range is between people who are counting ANY branded communication
as a "commercial" vs. those who are only counting actual commercials as commercials.
So, if you see someone wearing a polo shirt with the pony on it, does that count as a commercial message
vying for your attention? What about the branding on the cereal box and the milk and the billboards and
so on? If you count ALL of those exposures you arrive at a number in the thousands. If you only
count the actual commercials heard on Radio, seen on TV, and looked at on the Internet, the number
is typically an order of magnitude lower."
- Jeff Sexton
One of our Canadian Partners had this comment:
Yes. Jeff is correct. It was taken from the book Positioning and I am pretty
sure it was updated in Jack Trout's "Differentiate or Die".
– Jane Fraser
I am going to turn my TV and Computer off for a while and put on a Nora Jones
CD and put a little bit of fire in the fireplace and relax before I go to bed
tonight. God has a way of erasing all the advertising we see each day; it’s called
sleep.
Perhaps now would be a good time to have a
complimentary meeting with a Wizard of Ads Partner. Links to their websites and blogs are listed down the right side of
The Wizard Times. Hundreds of their articles with free insightful advice can been seen at
www.americansmallbusiness.com 2009 would be a great year to attend a class at the
Wizard Academy 21st Century Business School in Austin Texas.
What is the Wizard Academy?
See you next week.
Clay Campbell
Wizard of Ads
PS.
Need help to attract more customers and grow your business?
