American Advertising Attitudes Are More Favorable than You Might Think...

From Annoyed to Appreciative—Consumer Sentiment About Advertising

By NCS Marketing

As a company whose mission is to improve the effectiveness of advertising across all media, at NCS, we like to understand the American sentiment towards advertising from appreciative to annoyed and everywhere in between.

According to findings from two of our recent consumer sentiment surveys fielded in late 2021, 50% of Americans believe that advertising is most helpful when they’re in the market for the product advertised, 44% when the product is relevant to them and 32% when the ad creative resonates with them.

This might help explain why consumers have even come to appreciate some forms of advertising: nearly half of Americans shared that they enjoy holiday ads, and one-third feel holiday ads put them in the right mood for the season, according to our latest NCSolutions Holiday 2021 Omnibus Survey. 

A large contingent of consumers are open to brands using their information to advertise products in the name of relevancy: 37% say it helps them discover new products and 33% don’t mind if it provides a more relevant experience. 

But when advertising doesn’t get these critical elements right, consumers find it downright annoying. When asked about advertising pet peeves, over half of Americans (54%) said they don’t like it when they see the same ad too many times, 41% don’t like it when the product being advertised is irrelevant and one-quarter (25%) when the ad creative doesn’t resonate. 

While these attitudes toward advertising might have once had marketers singing “You can’t always get what you want,” the advanced technology and consumer insights available today have made it possible to meet shopper demands for relevance and timeliness.

According to the same survey, three out of four consumers find it helpful to receive advertising for brands and products they have purchased in the past. This is in line with our own extensive evaluation for purchase-based targeting (PBT)—audience targeting based on past consumer purchases. PBT leads to returns that are 3X higher than other methods of audience targeting like demographic, contextual, and behavioral.

There’s an opportunity for brands to stand out when they're giving consumers ads for the right product at the right time. To learn more, read an example of how a large platform helps CPG advertisers make their ads best resonate with buyers to drive sales.