Moment-to-Moment Optimal Branding in TV Commercials: Preventing Avoidance by Pulsing

This paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding the impact that branding activity and consumers’ concentration of attention have on their moment-to-moment avoidance decisions during television advertising. It formalizes this in a generalized Dynamic Linear Model (gDLM) and estimates it with MCMC methods. Data on commercial avoidance through zapping along with eye tracking on 31 commercials for nearly 2000 participants are used to calibrate the model. New, simple metrics of attention concentration are shown to strongly predict avoidance. Independent of this, central on-screen brand positions but not brand size further raise commercial avoidance. Based on the model estimation, the branding activity under marketing control is optimized for ads in the sample to reduce commercial avoidance. This reveals that pulsing brand presence--while keeping total brand exposure constant-decreases commercial avoidance significantly. Implications for advertising management and theory are addressed.