The Results Are In

Here are the results from the poll we did last week. The results are listed in descending order from most surprising to least.

Question: Which of the "Top 10 Double Secret Facts" surprised you most?

1. (17.35%) TV viewers are no more likely to leave the room during a commercial break than they are before or after the break.

2. (16.69%) Baby boomers dominate 94% of all consumer packaged goods categories. 5% of advertising is aimed at them.

3. (15.90%) 96% of all retail activity is done in a store. 4% is done on line. 

4. (12.05%) DVR owners watch live TV 95% of the time. 5% of the time they watch recorded material. 

5. (9.88%) 99% percent of all video viewing is done on a television. 1% is done on line.

6. (8.19%) Since the 1990s, click-through rates for banner ads have dropped 97.5%. 

7. (7.71%) TV viewership is now at its highest point ever.

8. (5.30%) Since the introduction of TiVo, real time TV viewing has increased over 20%.

9. (5.06%) The difference in purchasing behavior between people who use DVRs to skip ads and those who don’t: None.

10. (1.93%) 99.9% of people who are served an online display ad do not click on it.

Thanks for voting.

As you'd expect, a couple of web maniacs have had fits over this. They think that any reporting of facts casting doubt on the magical properties of the web is an attack on them. The interesting thing is that the facts about web advertising seem not all that surprising to most people. 60% of the votes went to 4 facts that have nothing at all to do with web advertising.

Personally, the fact that surprised me most was that 95% of the time homes equipped with TiVo watch live TV.

Also, almost a thousand people have printed the sheet we provided that listed these facts.

In a recent post..
...called The Amazing Blindness of Marketers, and in other posts over the years, I  have commented on the stupidity of marketers whose knee-jerk target audience is always "young people." For an interesting piece on this topic, I recommend this.