Evolving Ad Avoidance

Welcome to week 7! This week focuses on perception and how we view the world around us. However, this post will focus on the topic of ad avoidance and how it has evolved over the years. 

With so many projects coming to fruition next week, these next few days promise to be quite busy. But don't give up! You've got this.


As an Advertising and Public Relations major, the topic of ad avoidance is very important to me. I can make the best advertisement on Earth--one filled with pathos, and entertainment and whole message--but if the consumer decides to change the channel or use ad block, it doesn't matter in the slightest. For advertising, it's now a matter of just getting to that target audience.

If you're unsure what I'm talking about, ad avoidance is defined by our textbook as, "Mechanical ways for consumers to selectively avoid exposure to advertising messages." For example, when someone records an episode of Friends and fast-forwards through the commercials to get back to the show. The ability to record shows and movies gave way to many professionals freaking out; after all, this allowed the consumer to completely bypass advertisements if they so wished. People said that the release of the DVR was the very death of advertising as we knew it. However, as one can see (especially since we just passed the Super Bowl), commercial advertising is far from dead. However, that doesn't mean that ad avoidance is gone.

Emarketer (a blog dedicated to discussions on marketing practices and relevant topics), in their article, Ad Avoidance Isn't New—It's Just Evolving discusses with Walt Horstman offers his opinion on the evolving definition of ad avoidance:

eMarketer: In our current advertising landscape, what do you believe is the most prevalent example of ad avoidance?

Horstman: While this topic is extremely timely right now with the launch of the ad-blocker apps on mobile, technology has been at work trying to block ads for quite a while. Just look at the history of the DVR. When it was introduced, there was great concern over the health of TV advertising—the adoption of the DVR and how consumers use it didn’t bring about the catastrophe scenario that some worried it would. What it did inspire, was a change in the currency for TV advertising so the economic model can adapt to new technological introductions..

I take a very similar position to Horstman on this issue. Ad avoidance is far from dead--with the birth of the internet (and subsequent advertising integrated into it), people are still trying to find new and complex ways to avoid advertisements. Take AdBlock and AdBlockPro for example. These are two add-ons to Google that are becoming increasingly commonplace. Any computer that I open Google Chrome onto for the first time automatically downloads the software.

 Additionally, there's YouTube and the advertisements that are skippable after the first few seconds:

Is YouTube contributing to Ad Avoidance by offering to skip advertisements?

However, Hortmann concludes, that the DVR was not the death of advertisements. It merely changed the economy of TV advertisements and perhaps some practices of those who produced these ads. Likewise, I don't think that modern ways of ad avoidance will mean the end of advertising as we know it. It will simply change the practices as both consumers and advertisers evolve.

As advertisers create new and innovative advertisements that integrate into new technologies, so will customers create ways to avoid these advertisements--I feel as though this is unavoidable. The solution to solving this problem is innovation on the side of the advertisers: create vibrant advertisements on YouTube that catch an individuals attention and keeps them longer than 5 seconds. Use animals and cute children so people will feel a connection to your advertisement--do anything to draw in that audience.