PODCAST:More or Less: Behind the Stats
TITLE:Do we see 10,000 adverts per day?
DATE:2024-01-13 00:00:00
URL:
MODEL:gpt-4-gizmo
In the "More or Less: Behind the Stats" podcast episode from January 13, 2024, titled "Do we see 10,000 adverts per day," Tim Harford and his team delve into the claim that people encounter between 6,000 to 10,000 ads daily. This statement, which was referenced in Andrew Simpson and Leo Murray's book "Badvertising," raises questions about its feasibility given the limited number of hours in a day.
To investigate, the team talks to Sam Anderson, an editor with The Drum, a marketing publication. Anderson's research uncovers that these high estimates of daily ad exposure, often found in marketing influencers' blog posts, lack scientific backing and are essentially inflated over time without a credible source. A key source for the 5,000 ads per day figure, quoted in Jay Walker-Smith's book "Coming to Concurrence," clarifies that this number referred to the total marketing "clutter" that consumers might be surrounded by, not the ads they actually notice or pay attention to.
Further exploration reveals that these numbers originated from speculative blog posts, with no robust methodology or scientific validation. The podcast also traces the history of such claims back to the 1960s, when marketer Edwin Abel estimated that a family of four might encounter 1,500 ads daily based on TV and radio ad exposure. However, this number was for an entire family and from a different era, making it outdated and not reflective of individual exposure.
The episode concludes that while the exact number of ads an individual sees daily varies based on lifestyle, location, and personal definition of what constitutes an advert, it's certainly not as high as 10,000. To illustrate this, Sam Anderson and others in the industry conduct their own counts of ad exposure, finding numbers far lower than the thousands often claimed, with the highest being 512 ads seen by an individual actively trying to encounter as many ads as possible in a day.
Listeners are encouraged to question such inflated numbers and understand the context and methodology behind such statistics. The episode challenges the perception of ad exposure and emphasizes the need for critical evaluation of statistical claims in everyday life.
