Radio Advertising Eliminator, 1934: “The device will operate the radio only when musical programs are coming over the air. Just as soon as any voice announcement is made from the station, the radio receiver is turned off and is not turned on again until the musical program resumes. It is believed that the new device uses a vibrating reed tuned to a predominant voice frequency to operate a relay which turns the set on and off.”

The first wireless TV remote control, 1955 Zenith Flash-Matic Tuning, had a mute button that was advertised as a commercial killer.

When avoiding ads, men use more mechanical methods: change the channel, for example. Women use more behavioral methods, such as talking to someone. (Journal of Business Research, 2008)

“Physical avoidance (leaving the room) reduces ad exposure by more than 20% and mechanical avoidance (switching channels) reduces it by 10%.” (Journal of Advertising, 1997)

People either plan to watch a television program or watch it on impulse. Impulse TV viewers (70.4%) were more likely to change the channel during commercial breaks as opposed to planned TV viewers (48.5%). (ANZMAC Conference Proceedings, 2003)

In December 2008, DVRs were in 27% of all TV households (30.1 million homes). In 2014, DVRs are expected to be in 44% of all TV households (52.3 million). But only 12% of DVR users say skipping ads is the most important feature. (Media Life, 2009)

Similarly, only “10% of viewers said the ability to zip through commercials was the reason they have a TiVo.” On the other hand, “9 of 10 viewers say they always or almost always fast-forward commercials”. (TV Week, 2008)

In 1994, Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury produced a TV spot for Mazda designed to counter ad avoidance. The ad encouraged viewers to “video” the ad with the VCR and then pause it several times to read a sequence of written split-second messages.

Online

2007: Spam was 83% of all email traffic, or 60-150 billion messages per day. (USAToday, 2007)

2009: “According to Microsoft, 97 percent of all e-mail sent on the Internet is spam.” (ArsTechnica) Microsoft founder Bill Gates used to receive four million e-mails per year, most of them spam. (BBC, 2004)

“120 billion spam messages [are sent] daily worldwide. That’s about 20 spam messages per day for every man, woman and child on the planet.” (IronPort Trends, 2008, pdf)

At the same time, spam filters are becoming better at recognizing and blocking unwanted messages. (Wired, 2007)

Response rate for spam: 1 in 12,500,000 emails sent. (Berkeley+UCSD study, 2008, pdf)

The average click-through rate for a banner ad:
2004 – 0.33%
2006 – 0.22%.
2008 – 0.19%

Then: During the first seven months of 2002, there were more than 11.3 billion pop-up ad impressions. 80% of pop-ups were from 63 companies. (Nielsen Online, 2002, pdf)

Now: “Some 79 percent of survey respondents said they already had a pop-up blocker of some sort, and 43 percent said they already had ad-blocking software.” (AdWeek, 2008)

As of September 30, 2008, there were 172,523,062 registrations for the “Do Not Call” list (FTC pdf). The US population at the time was about 305 million people.

For some historical perspective, here are some products that were advertised for their abilities to skip ads:

Compiled by Juan Alvarado (emerging media intern; on LinkedIn, Twitter).

Related posts: The Elusive Advertising Clutter and Why Adblock Plus May Be A Good Thing