Consumers endure ad bombardment

NEW YORK - To hype the fall TV season, CBS plastered pictures of its shows’ stars on postage stamps and across the insides of elevator doors. It laser-coated its eye logo on more than 35 million eggs and carved the name of a new program, “Jericho,” into a 40-acre Kansas cornfield.

CBS added those blips to the marketing storm sweeping the nation. Advertising is intruding on more previously untouched corners of life, including novels, hotel shower curtains, the sides of school buses and the bellies of pregnant women. Golfer Fred Couples is often followed on the course by a gaggle of women paid to wear the name Bridgestone Golf, his sponsor.

It’s advertising ad nauseam. And it’s getting worse.

“I’ve never seen things changing as much as they are now,” says Rance Crain, editor in chief of the trade magazine Advertising Age and a 40-plus-year observer of the marketing industry. “Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass.”

Ad-zapping devices — and a decrease in consumer attention spans — have created doubts about the effectiveness of traditional TV, radio and print ads. In response, marketers have become increasingly invasive.

“It’s out of control,” says Jenny Beaton, a mother of three who lives in Westlake, Ohio. “I don’t know how advertisers can think they’re selling more products. It’s just annoying everybody.”

Beaton says she simply tunes out most ads.

“Advertising is so ubiquitous that it’s completely turning people off,” says Crain. “It’s desensitizing people to the message.”

The more consumers ignore ads, the more ads marketers spew back at them, says Max Kalehoff of marketing research firm Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “It’s like a drug addiction. Advertisers just keep buying more and more just to try to achieve prior levels of impact. In other words, they’re hooked.”

This year, marketers will spend a record $175 billion on ads in major media, such as TV, radio, print, outdoor, movie theaters and the Internet, says ad buying firm ZenithOptimedia. That’s up 5 percent over 2005. Add in direct mail and other direct-response ads, and the total will hit $269 billion.

The increase comes from advertisers trying to out-yell each other, says J. Walker Smith, president of the consulting firm Yankelovich. If a marketer feels drowned out, “they just turn up the volume.”

Here’s how loud it’s getting:

“The average 1970s city dweller was exposed to 500 to 2,000 ad messages a day, says Smith. Now, it’s 3,000 to 5,000.

“In 2005, MTV viewers had to put up with 21 percent more prime-time commercials per hour than in 2004, says TNS Media Intelligence and media firm MindShare.

“Marketers shelled out 71 percent more — $941 million — to integrate brands into TV shows in 2005 vs. 2004, says PQ Media.

“Spending for on-screen movie theater ads swelled 21 percent to $453 million in 2005 versus 2004. Off-screen ads, such as lobby promotions, rose 18 percent to $75 million, according to the Cinema Advertising Council.

“Marketers raised so-called out-of-home spending by 9 percent last year to $6.3 billion for everything from billboards to elevator ads, says Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

There’s more to come. Marketers see small-screen devices — iPods, cell phones, laptops and video games — as the growth frontier:

“Spending for ads on Web-enabled mobile phones is expected to be $150 million this year, up three-fold versus 2005, according to the consulting firm Ovum. By 2009, that will swell 766 percent to $1.3 billion.

“In 2005, $21 million was spent to place products in video games, a 38 percent rise over 2004, according to PQ Media.

“Last year, companies shelled out $13 billion on Internet classified, search and display ads, says JupiterResearch. That’s expected to rise 100 percent to $26 billion by 2011.

Some consumers are pushing back. “The human brain doesn’t process things any better than it did 30 years ago. But there are more people competing for that processing time,” says Yankelovich’s Smith.