Room with the viewers: why advertising thrives in the living room

A big screen, professional content, the company of others, and a better mood combine to make the living room the perfect place for advertising

The living room is the environment at home that’s best suited for advertising to succeed. That’s the key finding from a new study of video advertising that examined where in the home advertising was most likely to be remembered – and why.

The ‘Context Effects’ study – jointly conducted by Map The Territory and Tapestry Research, and commissioned by Thinkbox – has identified the key factors influencing in-home video advertising performance and how they combine to help advertisers achieve success.

Key findings include:

• High quality, professionally-made video content drives 60% higher ad recall than non-professional
• People are 44% more likely to trust advertising seen within professional content
• TV screens drive the highest advertising recall: 34% more than ads seen on a computer, 60% more than on a tablet/smartphone
• Audio is important: having a soundbar in a viewing occasion on a TV screen increases ad recall by 20%
• Ad recall increases by 23% when watching with others
• TV is the social medium: 44% of TV is watched together with others, compared with 10% for YouTube
• The right in-home advertising context can increase ad recall by up to 6.3 times

Why is the living room great for advertising?

The study identified four key contextual factors that drive ad recall at home. In order of influence, these were:

1. Watching professional video content
2. The TV screen
3. Being with company
4. Our mood

The researchers found that the living room offers by far the most powerful combination of these four factors and is the environment at home that’s best suited for advertising to succeed. When advertising was experienced in the living room, respondents had significantly better ad recall than in any other room of the house. The study found that the living room is:

• 176% better at driving ad recall than the kitchen
• 10% better than the bedroom
• 22% better than all the other rooms in the house

The primacy of professional content

The living room is used overwhelmingly to watch professionally-produced content on a TV set, with this accounting for 80.2% of living room video viewing (source: Barb). Only 5.1% of living room viewing is to non-professional video content watched on the TV set – for example, user-generated content uploaded to YouTube. The remainder is other uses of TV sets, for example gaming.

The study discovered that ad recall is much higher from occasions involving professionally-produced content compared with non-professional content, with 60% higher ad recall for professional content vs. non-professional content.

People are also 44% more likely to trust an advert seen within professional content and 39% more likely to find the advertising entertaining.

Statistical analysis used in the study revealed that seeing advertising within professional video content not only directly drives ad recall but also indirectly; professional content is enjoyed more by viewers and enjoyment itself is a significant driver of ad recall.

Bigger the screen, bigger the memories

The study found that people are more likely to remember advertising if they see it on a big screen – and they are also likely to enjoy the occasion more.

In the research, TV screens drove the highest ad recall: 34% more than advertising seen on a computer, 60% more than on a tablet/smartphone.

The quality of audio was also significant, as well as the size of the screen. Having a soundbar in a viewing occasion on a TV screen was found to increase ad recall by 20%.

Advertising works harder when it’s seen with others

The study found that ad recall increased by 23% when watching with others, underlining the importance of shared environments to advertising performance.

According to Barb, 89% of shared viewing occasions happen in the living room, compared with 7% in the bedroom, 2% in the kitchen, and 3% in other rooms.

Social media is not that social

Barb data shows that TV is the shared medium. Across all its forms, 44% of TV is watched jointly (42% of live TV, 50% of playback, 44% of BVOD, and 43% of SVOD). In comparison, only 10% of YouTube is watched together with other people.

The study found that non-professional video content isn’t well suited to the living room. The living room is a social space but online social media are increasingly tailored to specific individual tastes. Despite their name, social media look increasingly personal rather than social.

Advertising that is placed around non-professional content is better suited for personal, more targeted tastes. However the research identified a risk of advertising being skipped when it is encountered in this more private content, as it could come between the viewer and their most personal interests.

The home of quality content

By measuring the contextual factors influencing ad recall, the study identified that for the best combination of in-home factors (in the living room, watching professional content on a TV set with others, feeling satisfied with the occasion) average ad recall was 32.5%.

Compared to the weakest combination of factors (in the kitchen, watching non-professional content on your own – 5.1% ad recall on average) this shows that the right in-home advertising context can increase ad recall by up to 6.3 times.

Matt Hill, Research and Planning Director, Thinkbox: “TV is the social medium. It brings people together and gets ads talked about. Every night there are nearly 5 million conversations about the ads on commercial TV. Great planners have long argued the case for the power of context and this study provides the proof that it really does make a huge difference – even room to room. What’s clear from this research is that TV is uniquely placed to deliver the context that delivers memorability: big screen, professionally produced, viewed together, and mood enhancing.”

Andy Davidson, Co-Founder of Map The Territory: “To understand why advertising is so effective in the living room you need to understand why people are there. We learned that people don’t only gather to watch TV, they also watch TV to gather. In this context all shared content, from the hot new drama to a regular video ad, is working in the higher service of bringing that household a little closer together. It’s all useful, so ads are more accepted, relevant, enjoyed, and ultimately more memorable. In contrast, social media is, ironically, much more personal, and this anti-social content – and advertising around it – is less suited to the shared living room environment.”

Ian Wright, Joint Managing Director of Tapestry Research: “Understanding the impact of context on ad recall is difficult to do, and not something that we measure through direct questioning of consumers. Instead, we asked viewers a number of simple questions – such as ‘what did you watch yesterday?’ and ‘who were you with?’– and then used advanced modelling techniques to understand what’s going on in people’s homes in relation to ad recall. What emerged was that the living room offers a complex and powerful set of factors that combine to drive higher ad recall.”

Methodology

• The study employed a range of research methods to gain a rounded view of advertising context.
• Map The Territory applied qualitative and videographic methods to observe viewing habits, and undertook consultations with academic cognitive psychologists and anthropologists to explain viewing habits.
• Tapestry Research utilised quantitative research and sophisticated statistical analysis (Structural Equation Modelling) to understand how different factors impact directly and indirectly on advertising effectiveness.
• The qualitative phase involved 20 UK households that were representative of household type, class, age, race, sexuality. In 10 of the households we observed them naturally over a 7-day period and conducted a series of experiments with their viewing contexts – forcing them apart, to watch in different rooms, on different devices, watching different content – before going in to meet them in home to interview them on their experiences.
• The quantitative phase included a nationally representative survey of 2,000 UK consumers aged 18-75 who had watched video content via any source the previous day. Part of this survey incorporated a detailed viewing diary that took each respondent through up to three viewing occasions from the previous day, giving a total of 5,003 viewing occasions to analyze.
• Via the diary, the researchers could get extremely close to the viewing experiences, covering all aspects: where, with who, when, how - as well as their mood and mindset.
• For each occasion respondents had to answer a number of advertising effectiveness metrics, including ad recall, enjoyment, brand attribution, and if they took any action based on the ad.
• To provide context, TRP Research conducted analysis of Jan-Dec 2023 Barb data to provide detailed understanding of the amount and location of shared viewing.