Watching TV ads is good for your brain

Watching TV ads is good for your brain


Commercial world enhances wellbeing of kids
The Best of the Best - Cadbury adverts

Watching television adverts is good for your brain as taking a break in the middle of programs improves concentration, according to new research from the Journal of Consumer Research.

As TV bosses plan to put even more adverts on the box, the research reveals that commercial interruptions often enhance our enjoyment of watching TV.

Even non-commercial interruptions had the same positive effect as commercials.

Leif Nelson, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the new research, said, “The punch line is that commercials make TV programs more enjoyable to watch. Even bad commercials.

“When I tell people this, they just kind of stare at me, in disbelief. The findings are simultaneously implausible and empirically coherent.”


Ads such as Cadbury's 'Gorilla' and Sony Bravia's 'Paint' have proved that consumers enjoy entertaining ads, and furthermore, are willing to pass them on to their friends.

Advertisers also are now making more of a point of telling us the exact time and program in which a campaign breaks. This week, Guinness announced it would be rerunning some of its most iconic and popular ads from the past 80 years. On of which breaks next Friday (9 March).

The research from the Journal of Consumer Research attributes the findings to a behavioral trait called adaptation.


Adaptation predicts that even positive experiences become less enjoyable over time. The study claims that the longer viewers continuously watch a TV program, the less intensely they enjoy the experience.

Therefore, an annoying set of commercials will make the show more enjoyable to the viewer once it comes back on.