It always amazes me how advertising goes the extra mile by researching their target audiences now. Ads are served up to people fresh and fast; bright and colourful; short and sweet. Content is arranged attractively and written in brief. Since this audience-centric trend began, I cannot help but notice a similar trend in our attention spans.
According to Canada’s latest statistics, 14.2 billion dollars were spent by advertising agencies across all mediums last year: T.V., newspaper, radio, web and social media. This is only the number for ad spending; think about the money spent by companies for research on consumer behaviour. With Canada’s population at approximately 36.25 million, this means that roughly $392 was invested into each Canadian last year; just over $1 a day to ensure each of us is exposed to someone trying to sell us something. With all of these advertisers vying for our attention and money, how do they set themselves apart? Companies spend so much more money each year, researching consumer behaviour and design. The most simplistic of logo designs usually take a year or two to finalize, as companies weigh the pros and cons of having bold colour and less text or thin, clean typefaces versus classic, weighted ones. The newest trend as of late is short video. Shorter than commercials, these videos tell a quick story to showcase one emotion, and quickly flash the product in the eye of the consumer so as to associate that feeling with that product and vice versa. Content creators have jumped on board with the trend, with applications like Vine where people can create short videos, six seconds or less, to cut down on the boring parts of the original. All this time and money is being spent on us, but I don’t think we really recognize what it’s doing.
Billboards are no longer printed advertisements along the highway; they are an invasive species, evolved to have screen displays to showcase repetitive commercials. Bright commercials too. If under-glow on cars and texting while driving is considered distracted driving, I think these billboards should be considered distracted driving as well. It’s difficult trying to drive at night with multiple bright screens trying to sell you something, more so if you have young passengers you are responsible for. Fast food restaurants no longer have just menus anymore. They have menus up on screen, where advertisements of featured food items pop up every couple of seconds, disrupting your decision.
As a result of these quick ads, our attention spans are atrocious. The National Centre for Biotechnology Information informed us all three years ago that the average length of a human’s attention span is 8 seconds, as opposed to our average of 12 seconds in 2000. Goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds. Dogs average 27 seconds. We are less than goldfish! How are we supposed to take care of business, our families and this Earth if we can’t focus on one thing for longer than 8 seconds?
I am without doubt that the reason for our short attention spans is due to our consumer-centric society. Information, both good and bad is taken in at such a rapid rate. Got a question? Google it, and within 0.6 seconds you will receive pages upon pages of answers. Did Mom forget to write down a special recipe prep technique? That’s okay, YouTube will show you in a quick, less than 30 second video complete with finished product. We give into this brief lifestyle because it doesn’t feel like a burden to learn something, to fix something or to make something. We are lazy, plain and simple. This way of doing things is leading us to less and less common sense. We fill our head with so much information day to day, but we simply ignore common sense it seems. Common sense can tell us about content that isn’t legitimate, or that advertisements put out by companies aren’t being totally truthful.
In a society dominated by product and service, it would be prudent for the consumer to have knowledge as well as common sense before purchasing. It would be prudent for the consumer to be aware of how advertisers do their job. It would be prudent for the consumer to read more and watch less.
