• Ad Age, Thursday, October 11, 2007 10:48 AM

TV ads can actually reduce consumer sensitivity to price differences, according to data from the Apollo pilot project that tracks media and shopping habits. A new study that mixes media-exposure info from Arbitron's Portable People Meters with purchase data from Nielsen's Homescan consumer panel says that exposure to TV ads decreases the tendency to react to price changes. The study, which involved an unnamed "Brand X," broke subjects down into heavy, medium and light purchasers, and found that the heavy ones were most likely to have their price sensitivity reduced by exposure to TV ads. And the more ads, the less sensitivity: Apollo found that ad exposure has a cumulative effect, with one or two spots for the brand reducing price sensitivity and four or more cutting it further.

But "behavior changes [taper] off at between seven and eight exposures," say Arbitron and Nielsen. It is unclear what "Brand X" is--but most likely it was a common household product from an Apollo charter client, which includes Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Kraft, Pfizer and SC Johnson. The study comes as Apollo tries a full national rollout of the service, with plans calling for a nationwide single-source panel of 30,000 households. "There's a lot of excitement about the potential of the data to drive market and decision-making, but there is also the reality of price-value and other alternatives," says Arbitron CEO Stephen Morris.

Read the whole story at Ad Age »