Global: Has advertising lost its connection with consumers?
Advertising has always been designed to attract consumers to products and brands but is it as effective as it was? Data from YouGov’s latest survey reveals that around 50% of the global population say that advertising isn’t as interesting as it used to be. This opinion is shared widely in most of the 18 individual markets studied in this survey.
Chinese consumers are most likely to agree that advertising isn’t as interesting anymore (56%). While urban Indians are also slightly more likely than global respondents to say the same (52%), the other Asian markets find themselves registering a lower share of consumers who agree. The online community of Indonesians (38%) are the least likely consumers to agree not just in Asia but in all markets in this survey
Marketers all over the world, especially in Europe, may wish to pay close attention to this sagging interest in advertising. More than half of the consumers in most European countries say that ads no longer have that same impact. Italy and Poland are the only two European countries where less than half agree – and even they offer significant proportions who do (45% and 43% respectively).
The number of consumers who disagree with the statement is low among all 18 markets, with India registering the highest figure of 18%. Denmark registers less than one in ten consumers who have not discerned a decline in the interest levels of ads (7%), the least likely of all markets to disagree. China and Great Britain (9% each) are the only other countries to register slightly less than one in ten consumers who disagree with the statement.
Although a higher share of urban Mexicans reveal that they still find advertising interesting (17%), they are also the second most likely to say the opposite (55%). Slightly fewer consumers in Canada (49%) and the US (47%) feel that the quality of advertisements has dropped.
Breaking the data by age reveals that there isn’t much of an attitudinal difference between different age groups. Consumers aged 55 and above are slightly more likely to agree that advertising isn’t as interesting as it used to be (52%), but the other age groups also make up nearly half who agree.
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Methodology: The data is based on the interviews of adults aged 18 and over in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 514 and 2036 for each market. All interviews were conducted online in March 2022. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples.