• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 23, 2014

“Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.”

No, that wasn’t a quote overheard at OMMA Audience Targeting in Los Angeles today. It was one flashed on a screen by Forrester Senior Analyst Susan Bidel during her research presentation, and she attributed it to something English writer Samuel Johnson said in 1759, suggesting the more things change, the more people feel overwhelmed by the volume of ads targeted at them.

By the time the average American reaches the age of 65, Bidel said, they have seen 2 million TV commercials, and the number of digital ads they’re exposed to everyday is somewhere between “the hundreds” and “the thousands.”

In other words, if you’re a brand that is serious about breaking through all that ad vomit, you’d better make sure you are targeting the right message to the right audience at the right. You know, being relevant. She made a strong case for the increasing role of “first party” data.