Consumers Still Prefer TV Ads When Deciding What To Buy, With Surprising Age Breakdown

A July poll by AdweekMedia/Harris into which advertising consumers find most helpful in deciding what to buy found TV ads still the most popular, with 25% of total responses. Surprisingly, the popularity of TV ads is higher with 18-34 years olds (34%) than 24-44s (24%) and 55-pluses (15%). Following TV ads is internet search ads (contextual ads) with 18% of responses. Another surprise is that the eldest group (55-plusers) finds this form more helpful than the youngest group (18-34s), 20% compared to 16%. Newspaper ads took 15% of responses and internet banner ads 2%, while 40% said none of these.