Are Consumers Getting Tired of Intrusive TV Advertising?

CPG marketers may be optimizing reach and frequency while consumers are optimizing ways to avoid them. For decades, consumer packaged goods marketers have relied on a straightforward formula: reach consumers frequently enough, build mental availability, and be there when they’re ready to buy.

That formula isn’t dead. But the consumer on the other side of the television has changed dramatically.

According to Gartner research released in 2026, 81% of U.S. consumers say they try to ignore or tune out advertising. Even more concerning, 52% say they actively take steps to block ads—including paying for ad-free experiences and using ad-blocking technologies. For CPG marketers spending billions across linear television, connected TV, and streaming platforms, that should be a warning.

The problem may no longer be reaching consumers. The problem is getting them to care.

Consumers Have Become Professional Ad Avoiders

Consider your personal viewing habits. The commercial break starts to play. What do you do? Pull out your phone. Mute the TV. Stand up and walk away. Fast forward. Or pay for a streaming service that offers limited or no advertisements.

Ad avoidance may not even be a conscious thought for consumers. We’ve been trained to see advertising and think nothing of it. Gartner found that 81% of consumers try to ignore advertising, which suggests something fundamental has shifted. An ad impression is not the same as an engaged customer. However, a lot of the advertising industry still treats an impression that way. We believe that thinking will get us into trouble.

CPG Has a Frequency Problem

CPG marketers are in a unique position because many of their offerings fall into categories of goods that are purchased repeatedly. Laundry detergent. Toothpaste. Snacks. Cereal. Soda. Paper towels. Cleansers. Beauty products. Etc.

When marketers worked in traditional media, these categories benefited from frequency. The more you saw that Head & Shoulders shampoo commercial, the more likely you were to remember it when you were at the store trying to pick between Head & Shoulders, Suave, and Tide. Fast forward to digital targeting and connected television, where frequency can now reach absurd levels. Consumers can now see the same advertisement repeatedly.

What was once frequency now leads to ad fatigue. You may see one version of a commercial while watching Hulu, then see it again while watching your favorite team play. Next, you may see a snippet of it on YouTube before seeing another version of that same commercial on Instagram. While this may be perceived by the marketer as a well-planned integrated omnichannel campaign, it feels a lot more like to the consumer: “Why is this brand stalking me?!” And that consumer perception is key.

More Frequency Doesn’t Automatically Mean More Persuasion

CPG marketing organizations have become impressively adept at fine-tuning media delivery. We can track: Reach. Frequency. CPM. Completions. HH penetration. Incremental reach. ROAS. Retail media attr. But one measurement is often overlooked: Consumer annoyance.

At some point, another exposure won’t increase the likelihood to buy. It will just annoy the consumer. The challenge is that the threshold between optimal frequency and over-frequency varies. Launches need high exposure. Household staples don’t. Complex selling points need explanation. Familiar brands just need reminders. But a machine-driven media plan doesn’t know when to stop serving up impressions just because inventory is available and the consumer technically qualifies for the target audience. The campaign is performing…but mentally, it could be exhausting.

Television Isn’t Dead

The point is not for CPG marketers to drop television. TV is massive. Nielsen estimates that nearly 72% of U.S. TV viewing is delivered with ads. Connected TV is opening up an even bigger addressable opportunity. The error is spending without accountability.

The error is equating viewability with attention. The TV can be on. The ad can run. The consumer can “technically” be in the room. But none of that means anyone paid attention to that ad. It’s time we get far more disciplined about measuring media exposure versus human attention.

Streaming Has Made the Problem More Obvious

Broadcast TV at least spread messages among broad audiences. Connected TV delivers something more efficient: specificity. That should mean less waste. Yet it can also lead to overwhelming duplication. Viewers of ad-supported streaming services may see the same few ads dozens of times in a single episode. That’s not frequency. That’s bad frequency. Plus, when viewers hop between platforms, one consumer may get impressions from multiple demand systems that don’t talk to each other well. The CPG brand sees siloed campaigns. The consumer sees one company. That matters.

The Smartphone Changed Television Advertising Forever

The single largest competitor for advertising dollars might not even be another advertiser. It could be the smartphone. When consumers see a commercial, they aren’t necessarily flipping the channel like they used to. They are flipping screens. Checking email. Scrolling Instagram. Watching TikTok. Reading messages. Shopping on Amazon. Looking up sports scores. Searching for stuff they just saw on TV. The TV commercial plays on. The media buys an impression.

But attention has fled to a screen six inches away. That poses a measurement issue marketers must address. How many TV impressions are really being captured by empty eyeballs? The answer may significantly impact the value of television advertising.

Consumers Don’t Hate Advertising. They Hate Bad Advertising.

It’s worth noting that there is a distinction in what I just said. Consumers are not anti-advertising. In fact, some advertising is helpful. Some is entertaining. Some informs them about products they really want. Some further strengthens brands they already like. What they’re against is advertising that is irrelevant to them and keeps shouting at them. Consumers are constantly doing a subconscious mental audit: Is this interruption worth my time? Most ads don’t pass that test. Repetition doesn’t make a stupid message smart. It just makes it louder.

CPG Creative Has Become Too Safe

There’s another problem. A lot of CPG ads are interchangeable. Happy families. Perfect kitchens. Beautiful bathrooms. Laughing friends. Slow-motion food shots. Product demonstration. Logo. Tagline. Done. Professional execution. Acceptable research scores. No internal hemorrhaging. And then five minutes later… Nobody remembers it.

Big CPG companies have gotten very good at mitigating creative risk. The problem is they might also be mitigating memorability. When your consumers are doing their best to ignore advertising, being “acceptable” just isn’t enough. You have to fight for the next five seconds. And then the next five. And the five after that.

The Real Competition Isn’t Other Brands

A detergent brand isn’t fighting just another detergent ad. They are fighting every other thing you could be paying attention to. Netflix. TikTok. Instagram. YouTube. Text messages. Email. News. Sports. Games. Friends. Family. That elevates the competition to an entirely new level. CPG marketers are selling in an attention economy, not just a media marketplace. Purchasing an impression gives you a chance to win attention. It does not buy attention outright.

Retail Media Makes This Even More Important

Another consideration is the rise of retail media. Point-of-purchase targeting is becoming increasingly available to CPG marketers. That’s a huge opportunity. But bombarding consumers across every channel isn’t good marketing either. It’s easy for a shopper to see a brand on TV, spot it on Instagram, get a display ad, click on a sponsored search result on a retailer’s site, and then see an in-store promotion all before lunchtime. It can feel like amazing omnichannel marketing tactics at work. It sometimes is. Oftentimes, it’s just five different departments paying to reach the same consumer. CPG brands need to understand advertising pressure at the consumer level, not the channel level.

Maybe We Should Stop Optimizing Impressions

Media optimization has been a focus of the advertising industry for decades. Maybe it’s time we turned our attention to attention optimization. Instead of asking, “How many impressions did we deliver?” we should ask, “How many people actually paid attention?” Instead of “Did we hit our frequency target?” we should ask, “At what frequency did incremental effectiveness begin declining?” Instead of, “How much incremental reach did connected TV generate?” we should ask, “Did those additional households remember the message?” And instead of wondering, “What’s our CPM?” we should ask, “What did we pay for an attentive consumer?” Those are much harder questions. They’re also much closer to what marketers actually need to know.

Less Advertising Could Produce More Impact

Here’s a paradoxical notion for CPG marketers to ponder: What if some brands could actually advertise more effectively by advertising less? Scale back on excessive frequency. Rotate creative harder. Improve cross-platform frequency caps. Spend more money on effective creative. Focus on relevant situations. Stop reaching out to consumers who already bought. Suppress unnecessary impressions with retail data. Measure attention and lift, not just eyeballs. And most of all, know when the consumer has already heard you. Marketing is not a religion that demands you buy every available impression.

The CFO Should Care About This

This isn’t just an experience issue for consumers. It’s also a dollars-and-cents issue. If large numbers of TV and connected-TV impressions are being ignored mentally, companies are not just irritating consumers; they’re wasting marketing dollars. If you’re a large CPG company spending hundreds of millions on media buys each year, even small gains in attention efficiency could equate to huge savings. What if you learned that the tenth, 11th, and 12th exposures to your campaign created nearly zero incremental sales? Those are not marketing impressions; they are dollars down the drain. And when marketers look to trim their advertising budgets, scaling back inefficient frequency could be much smarter than across-the-board cuts to high-performing media.

The Question CPG Marketers Should Be Asking

Advertisers used to ask themselves one question: “How do we reach consumers?” Technology has solved that problem. Today, CPG brands can reach highly-targeted audiences on tv. Streaming. Social media. Retail media. The open web. The new challenge is vastly more difficult: “How do we make consumers want to pay attention?” That starts with better creative.

And it requires better relevance. Better frequency management. Better measurement. And most of all, more respect for the consumer’s time and attention. Attention is a finite resource. When 81% of consumers tell you they’re trying to ignore your ads, you should listen.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean throwing TV out with the trash. And it sure as heck doesn’t mean shifting your entire budget into digital ads and retail media. What it does mean is understanding that the basic economics of advertising have changed. In a world where reach is abundant and attention is scarce, CPG marketers have gotten extremely good at buying the former. But brands that want to win in the next era will be those that figure out how to earn the latter. Because the most expensive ad you’ll ever buy isn’t the one with the highest CPM. It’s the one you paid to deliver to someone who didn’t even watch it.