THINK VIEWERS ARE IGNORING TV ADS WHEN THEY REACH FOR THEIR PHONES? A NEW SURVEY REVEALS THE OPPOSITE

Research commissioned by Adwave, the self-serve advertising platform, shows that reaching for a phone while watching streaming TV is no longer a sign of a lost commercial break. More often, it is when a viewer decides to look something up, save it, and come back to it later.

A national survey of 500 US consumers, split evenly across four generations, found that this habit, which Adwave calls mobile bookmarking, is now the norm. It also tends to favour businesses viewers have never heard of before. Key findings include:

• Second-screen use is mainstream: 80 per cent of those surveyed use a phone, tablet, or laptop while watching streaming TV at least ‘sometimes’. Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennial viewers do it ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’.
• Third-screening is established: Around 1 in 7 people regularly watch Connected TV while using two other devices, rising to nearly 1 in 5 among Gen Z.
• Mobile bookmarking is a majority behaviour: 71.5 per cent of respondents have opened a browser tab or saved something on their phone while watching CTV, specifically to revisit later.
• Local beats national in post-ad search. Asked about the last business they searched for after a CTV ad, more respondents named a smaller or local business (39.5 per cent) than a well-known national brand (30.75 per cent).
• Unfamiliarity drives the search: The most-cited reason for searching after a CTV ad was “I hadn’t heard of the brand before and wanted to know more” (42.5 per cent).
• Younger viewers use bookmarking for local discovery: 52 per cent of Gen Z respondents have bookmarked a local business or restaurant, compared with 39 per cent of Millennials, 35 per cent of Gen X, and 23 per cent of Boomers.

“People assume a phone coming out during a commercial break means an advertiser has lost that viewer’s attention. What this data shows is closer to the opposite. For a huge share of viewers, that phone isn’t a distraction, it’s a notebook. They’re not tuning out an ad; they’re queuing it up to look into later, and more often than not, it’s a business they’ve never heard of before that they’re curious enough to go find. That’s a real opportunity for smaller, lesser-known advertisers, not just the brands people already recognise,” commented David Naffis, CEO and Co-Founder, Adwave.

Source: advanced-television.com