What Ads Types Are Most “Helpful”? Search Ads Follow Newspapers, TV

Jul 2, 2009 at 11:59am ET by Greg Sterling

Trade magazine AdWeek and pollster Harris Interactive conducted a survey in early June among 2,521 US adults. People were asked what types of ads they found most “helpful” and what types of ads they ignored. Below are the top-line results as well as the age and geographically segmented data.

Most helpful in making purchase decisions:

37 percent say that television ads are most helpful
17 percent say newspaper ads are most helpful
14 percent say search engine ads are helpful
Radio ads (3 percent) and Internet banner ads (1 percent) are not considered helpful by many people
28 percent say that none of these types of advertisements are helpful to them in the purchase decision making process

Ad types that people ignore:

46 percent say they tend to ignore Internet banner ads
17 percent ignore search ads
13 percent ignore TV ads
9 percent ignore radio ads
6 percent ignore newspaper ads

One in ten Americans say they do not ignore any of these types of ads. Interestingly, younger survey respondents tended to find search ads less helpful than older users and ignored them more. That’s a bit counter-intuitive.

Here are the data segmented by age and geography:

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Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

See more articles by Greg Sterling >

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2 COMMENTS ON What Ads Types Are Most “Helpful”? Search Ads Follow Newspapers, TV

nickstamoulis, July 3rd, 2009 at 9:00 am ET:
Premium member since 06/2009

Excellent data! I am actually shocked to see that 46% of people part of this study ignored internet banner Ads, I would think that this would be much lower…

JohnWEllis, July 3rd, 2009 at 9:46 am ET:

Greg,

Thanks for sharing this data.

No good comes from asking people what ads are “helpful”. People will always say they don’t like advertising and commercials. “It’s annoying”.

I get it every day. “Oh, you do those ads? I ignore those.”
My answer, “Oh, no you don’t. You just think about when you do.”

It’s only when ads don’t feel like ads they work. When someone is looking for widget A and a paid search campaign shows an ad for widget A, that’s no longer an ad. That’s filling the current demand. That’s helpful.

Search ads, if done properly, will be favored by audiences, despite what they say in surveys.

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