How Much Do You Hate Ads?

People have mixed feelings about advertisements. Some go to great lengths to not see ads, paying for premium services and installing ad blockers. Others watch the Super Bowl only to see the advertisements in the form of commercials. Many fall into both of these categories at once depending on the content.

What makes us want to see advertisements? Obviously consumers enjoy advertisements when they are entertaining, funny or heart-warming.

We all loved the hilarious KIA commercial featuring Melissa McCarthy putting herself in perilous situations trying to save the planet. This ad obviously took a lot of time and money to hire McCarthy and feature such amazing special effects. (If not, rest in peace Melissa McCarthy.) But, not all advertisements are this special... as many of us are painfully aware of. Companies just don't have the resources to create Super Bowl-worthy ads for every product they sell.

More normal, every day ads are less exciting. Here is one I scrolled past today on Instagram:

This ad comes from fitness personality, stef_fit, and features contents from her gym bag showcasing several different products from several different brands. This ad is boring to most of us and we may register that it is not genuine - the fitness model probably wouldn't even use most of these products had she not been paid to sponsor them. But does this make it a bad ad?

We all know every ad has a similar agenda, but maybe we were looking for a new dry shampoo and seeing Batiste in an influential fitness model's "gym bag" helped us decide which one to buy.

Millions laughed along at KIA's commercial, but a very few percentage of people who viewed it purchased a KIA car after. On the other hand, this dull Instagram ad may have influenced many people to purchase this variety of products. I know this is comparing apples and oranges as a car is a much more involved purchase, but it makes you wonder: do advertisements even need to be enjoyable to work at a basic level? Maybe the boring ad won’t be as memorable as a Super Bowl commercial, but it still had a large reach and could’ve influenced many people’s purchases. How much time, energy, and resources should be put into advertisements?