Cure for Dull: The Great Media Mistake

Dull advertising is a waste of your time and your customers’ time, and in our new Cure For Dull report we’re giving you the strategies you need to avoid it. But there’s a factor that can turn a dull ad from a problem into a disaster: media.

As Karen Nelson-Field explains in her report The Eye-Watering Cost Of Dull Media, when it comes to dullness, media is not a level playing field. Some channels and formats are innately low-attention media, and the wrong media mix will ruthlessly punish dull advertising. The result, she says, is a staggering $198bn opportunity cost of dull ads on low-attention media.

Nelson-Field explores what happens to dull ads in fast-scroll, low-attention environments like non-premium social media, and it’s not pretty. But that isn’t social media’s fault – it’s a vital channel for brands. No, the problem is the ads that run there.

The least dull ads – measured by the proportion of viewers feeling neutrality, or no emotion, towards them – capture 59% of available attention volume. That’s a strong performance in a fast-moving environment. But the dullest ads struggle to get 6% of attention volume.

The story only gets worse for dull advertising. Just 34% of people pay extremely dull ads any attention, and the active viewing time is a mere 1 second – too short to cross the 2.5-second threshold at which memory forms. In a fast-moving medium, dull ads may as well not exist.

Even for ‘moderately dull’ ads – the second least dull quartile – there’s an attention crisis in low-attention environments, as active attention and time in view are half that of non-dull ads. Creativity is more important than ever in these environments, where a dull ad might get served but will leave no trace on the memory.

What compounds the problem is that dull ads are most of what gets served. A startling 72.8% of media spend on the dullest ads goes into non-premium social. That’s also where the majority of spend for ‘very dull’ ads (the second-worst quartile) lands.

So low-attention media is dominating budgets, but rather than serve ads on social platforms that showcase creative effectiveness, brands are filling them with work audiences don’t care about.

The key to understanding this situation is to know that longer format ads are less dull and more memorable. Emotion during an ad builds with time. System1’s Test Your Ad database shows that the average shortform ad (5-20 seconds long) scores 44% neutrality on average. For a longform ad (40-60 seconds) that average drops to 36%.

So for memorable ads – the most emotional and least dull top quartile – we find them more often on media that rewards and encourages longer ads. Linear TV, connected TV and premium social are the natural homes for memorable ads.

Dull ads are in a double bind. They’re often short form, and they’re served on fast-scroll channels which turn their dullness into even more of a liability. That’s why so much media spend is wasted.

What can a brand do? There’s two big questions they should be asking themselves. The first is about the balance of their media buying. Are they investing enough in high attention environments, which give you the time needed for brand building and creative effectiveness?

And the second is about the approach they’re taking to low-attention environments. Are they using them effectively or simply as a landfill for dull advertising? In The Cure For Dull we look closely at the creative elements that work best in short-form advertising, like familiar characters and dramatic action. Low-attention needn’t mean low-effectiveness, and these vital modern channels deserve better than dull.