Global: How influential are TV ads?
Viewing habits have changed in the last couple of years and YouGov’s Media Consumption Report for 2022 details the media activities that have been grabbing consumer attention across the globe. Among the various media types, a significant proportion of consumers say they intend to watch TV more often or at the same level this year compared to 2021.
A recent survey from YouGov’s latest tool, Global Profiles, asks consumers if a brand’s TV commercial has directly led to a purchase. Global Profiles tracks consumer thoughts, feelings, behaviours and habits, and also monitors global trends and media consumption across 43 markets
In this piece, we’ve chosen 27 countries from all the markets surveyed in Global Profiles. Marketers would be interested to know that globally nearly two in ten consumers (17%) attribute the purchase of a product directly to a brand’s TV commercial (and many more may have done so unconsciously, of course).
A number of countries over-index the global audience with South African consumers nearly twice as likely to say they have been directly influenced by a TV ad. (31%). A quarter of Romanians (25%) also say that a brand’s TV advert has led them to purchase the product and slightly fewer Brazilians say the same (23%).
Americans (15%) are slightly less likely than the global average to be influenced by TV commercials. However, they are more likely than consumers in their other North American counterparts – Mexico and Canada (11% each).
Compared to most markets, TV commercials hold considerably less sway in most European countries. Consumers in Great Britain and Germany are among the least likely of those in all 27 markets analysed to say they’ve bought a product because of a brand’s TV commercials (7% and 8% respectively).
In Asian countries, while consumers in India (22%), Philippines (21%) and Indonesia (19%) are more likely than the global audience to be persuaded by a TV commercial, Singapore (8%) and Japan (10%) feature lower down on the list.
Breaking down the data by age in every region reveals that among those who say that a TV ad has directly led to a purchase, older consumers are more likely to say so than younger ones.
In the Americas and APAC regions consumers aged between 45 to 54 years old are most likely to be influenced by advertisements (20% and 23% respectively). In Europe, age groups of 35-44, 45-54 and 55+ are as likely to say the same is true (13% each).
Among 18-24-year-olds across regions, consumers in APAC (14%) are most likely to say that they’ve bought a product because of a TV commercial. Europeans of this age group are less likely to be influenced - less than one in ten consumers (8%) say the same is true.
Receive monthly topical insights about the media and content industry, straight to your inbox. Sign up today.
Discover more media content here
Want to run your own research? Start building a survey now
Methodology: YouGov Global Profiles is a globally consistent audience dataset with 1000+ questions across 43 markets. The data is based on continuously collected data from adults aged 16+ in China and 18 and over in other markets. The sample sizes for YouGov Global Profiles will fluctuate over time, however the minimum sample size is always c.1000. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from India and UAE, which use urban representative samples, and China, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, which use online representative samples. Learn more about Global Profiles.