Consuming the commercial break : an ethnographic study of the potential audiences for television advertising

Abstract: Despite of the sociality of TV viewing, advertising researchers have traditionally studied the solitary viewer. The study of the social uses of advertising has been limited, and the reception of advertising in a naturalistic setting has practically been ignored. As a consequence, contextual factors of time, space, and everyday life have received only scant attention in the advertising literature. This thesis adopts the ethnographic method to investigate within a naturalistic setting the phenomenon of the consumption of commercial breaks. Eight households in Northwest London varying in age, socio-economic factors and other variables were filmed during a two-week-period and later interviewed. The videoethnography led to the identification of a set of cultural themes, which are illustrated in the thesis by behavioral episodes and interview excerpts from the participating households. In addition to the identification of archetypical behaviors, the thesis underlines a set of contingencies that have implications for behavior of potential audiences for television advertising, such as audience composition and time-of-day effects. As a scholar or practitioner with an interest in advertising, it is easy to overplay the role of advertising in people’s lives. However, the everyday life of the consumer consists of a myriad of demands and choices. For the consumer who needs to prioritize among countless information sources and competing demands for her attention, advertising is at best of minor importance. The results of this thesis highlight that advertising watching is merely one of many behaviors and by no means the default one that consumers engage in during commercial breaks and demonstrate the importance of balancing prevailing advertising-centered approaches to the study of television advertising consumption with an audience-centered approach.