Consumer reach alone isn’t enough
Editor’s note: Sam Killip joined Attest in 2019 and leads the customer research and customer success teams. Sam and her team support brands like Netflix, Unilever, Reddit and Nestle through their market research journey, helping them carry out effective research and uncover insights to unlock new areas for growth. Find Killip on LinkedIn.
The average consumer is exposed to hundreds of marketing messages per day, but getting in front of someone’s eyes or ears isn’t the same as getting into their hearts or minds. Attest’s latest media consumption research (registration required), drawn from nationally representative surveys of U.S. and U.K. adults, suggests consumers are largely tuning out of advertising.
Given the choice, the large majority of people skip an ad the moment they can, and even when that choice is taken away, genuine attention is far from guaranteed. For an industry still planning much of its spend around reach and frequency, attention is the number that needs to catch up.
Skipping is the default, not the exception
On social video, 67% of U.S. adults and 72% of U.K. adults say they always or usually skip an ad when given the option. Streamed TV fares a little better, but not by much: 57% in the U.S. and 63% in the U.K. skip whenever they can.
The behavior is endemic among the young: 82% of U.S. Gen Z and 88% of U.K. Gen Z always or usually skip a social video ad, and more than two-thirds do the same on streamed TV (68% U.S., 76% U.K.).
Older audiences skip less but still skip plenty. Among Boomers, 46% (U.S.) and 60% (U.K.) will opt-out of ads on social video when they can, and 36% (U.S.) and 41% (U.K.) on streamed TV. Every generation reaches for the skip button given the chance, but for Gen Z, doing so is close to a reflex.
Not all impressions are created equally
Plenty of formats don't offer a skip button at all, non-skippable pre-rolls, terrestrial radio, live broadcast. The instinct is to treat that as a win: if people can't skip, surely they're watching. The data says otherwise.
Asked what they actually do when an ad can't be skipped, U.S. respondents split three ways: 45% say they continue watching as intended, 35% say they direct their attention elsewhere while it plays and 17% mute the sound. In the U.K., the order flips, 45% redirect their attention elsewhere, 35% continue watching and 16% mute.
In both markets, a majority of forced impressions are not, by the viewer's own admission, actually being watched. Removing the skip button doesn't create attention. It just removes the audience's ability to be honest about not paying any.
Balancing engagement
Given how thin ad tolerance already is, certain choices actively accelerate disengagement further. “Too many ads” is the single biggest driver of disengagement (45% in the U.S., 47% in the U.K.), which could mean both too many ads packed into a single break and ad breaks that come around too often.
Our data shows ad tolerance has a fairly hard ceiling, sitting around 14 to 15 minutes between breaks on streamed TV and about 12 minutes on social video, and that ceiling barely shifts by age, gender or income. So, advertising into an environment that interrupts people’s viewing every two minutes is choosing to buy reach that's less likely to convert into attention.
Repetition and length further compound the problem: “repetitive ads” (38% U.S., 44% U.K.) and “long ads” (37% U.S., 45% U.K.) also both rank among the top disengagement triggers, with long ads a particularly acute issue for Gen Z (45% in the U.S. and 49% in the U.K.).
AI-generated advertising adds a newer, sharply generational risk. A third of Gen Z in the U.K. and 35% in the U.S. cite AI-generated ads as a reason to disengage versus just 17-22% of Millennials, Gen X and Boomers in either market.
Where celebrity endorsement earns its place, carefully
Against that backdrop, separate Attest research into celebrity advertising points to one lever that might genuinely cut through. Two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) and 72% of U.K. adults say they're more likely to notice a campaign that features a celebrity, and a similar share say a celebrity increases their ability to recall it (66% U.S., 73% U.K.).
It also translates into behavior: 80% of U.S. adults and 78% of U.K. adults say they've encountered a celebrity ad in the past year, and among those who have, close to 3 in 5 took at least one action afterward. Searching for the brand was the most common single action (33% U.S., 35% U.K.), followed by buying a product (20% U.S., 19% U.K.), following the brand on social media (18% in both markets), and recommending it to a friend (15% U.S., 12% U.K.).
There is a caveat, however. What determines whether a celebrity spot lands is largely down to fit. How much people like the celebrity, and how authentic the pairing feels, both come through repeatedly as the deciding factor between an endorsement that resonates and one that doesn't.
Effective ads for consumers
When viewers’ thumbs are hovering over the skip button, having a celebrity face might make the difference between pressing it or holding off. But even if you get consumers to watch all the way through, it doesn’t guarantee your ad will be effective.
Our research revealed that a celebrity endorsement is not a replacement for a strong brand message. When we asked people directly what shapes a positive view of a brand's advertising, featuring a celebrity ranked dead last of four factors tested. Less than two in 10 said it was the most influential element.
The brand message and what it stands for won by a wide margin, ranked most influential by 52% in the U.S. and 47% in the U.K., around three times the share who say the same of celebrity casting.
The takeaway for anyone weighing a celebrity-led campaign is this: it's a genuine amplifier for cut-through and recall. But pair the wrong celebrity, or even the right one, with a weak message, and the research suggests it won't move the needle nearly as much as it looks like it should on paper.