How many of these ads do you remember?

In Marketing Magazine each month there’s a feature that asks, how many of these TV commercials do you remember? Which if you’re like me and only watch Netflix, the answer will be zero.

But if you do dip into the world of TV every now and again, you’re reportedly exposed to hundreds of ads each day. Which leads on to the second question asked of the audience (1000 adults aged 16-64); how many of these TV commercials did you like?

This is where the figures drop. On average, about 40-50% of the viewers remembered seeing each add. Only 20-25% of viewers actually liked them.

We’re exposed to screens at all times of the day. If this report is to be believed, the average adult spends 590 minutes on ‘media’ consumption a day, of which they’re exposed to an average of 362 marketing messages. From that, 153 ads are able to attract the viewer’s attention for a few seconds or more.

Is the math getting too much? Bear with me.

If you’re going to be exposed to 153 adverts per day, but you’re only going to like 0.5 in every set, you’re going to spend a lot of time watching things you don’t really like. More importantly, reports show that children now spend on average around 17 hours a week in front of a screen – almost double the 8.8 weekly hours spent playing outside. By the age of ten they’ll have access to around five screens in their daily lives. That’s without stepping outside, or into a store where they might see more.

This means a huge gap between the amount of screens we’re exposed to in our daily lives and the amount of content which is good, or that we actually like. Or that we like for our children.

The same principle goes for screen content. How many times have you been stuck in a queue, waiting for your dinner or shopping in a store and been faced by bland, self-promotional or completely irrelevant content?

As brands and content creators shouldn’t we be giving our audience something better to watch?

The content problem

As we’ve mentioned before, if content is hard to update people don’t. Historically this has always been the way. A marketing or IT manager gets given the task of putting content up on their office or store screens. They’re not sure where to start, what content is available or even how to get it up onto the screen. Once they do the relief is palatable; it stays there, untouched until the CEO or worse, a customer, points out how out of date it is.

The importance of good content

Visceral reactions to visual content are best sellers. Furthermore, great content starts wtih your customer. Consumers aren’t interested in how great you are or what you can do if it isn’t directly relevant to their lives. When bombarded by messaging, this has to be the case. Great brands show rather than tell, building pictures and stories in the minds of their consumers.

Like any good story, screen ads need to be framed in a way where they’re easy to read. Mainly because, people don’t read. Everything from web pages, to articles to videos are scanned rather than read or viewed with one eye while the other remains on the street or screen in front of them. The same is true for digital signage screens.

Making your content scannable means framing it with a good angle and a beginning, middle and end that leads the viewer through and allows them to become hooked by the information you’re willing to provide.

Secondly, everyone's busy. Don’t make them work to piece together your information. Package it up in a comprehensive narrative and tell them exactly where you want them to go or what action you want them to take afterwards.

Lastly, make it relevant.

The secret sauce

Everyone’s overloaded with information. But good messaging is still able to cut through the noise. The problem of overload is that too many brands are trying to add too much information in an incoherent way. They don’t have the resources to update content, they’re not sure what their audience wants to see and they’re pushed up against time and deadlines.

With ScreenCloud we’re trying to make it easy. Easier to update, easier to change, easier to make great messages that your audience love. So that when Christmas or Summer rolls around, you can add a slide or two to your playlist. For the times when you’re out of the office and you need to edit content or images for your screens while on the move. So that when your design team or agency creates new ads, you can get them up on your screen while they’re still memorable and enjoyable.

We’re committed to helping brands and businesses to create better ads and screen content and we know you are too.

Why not take a look?