> I'd roughly guess that the amount of time a person had to spend with ads in the 60s in a year is about 1/12 of the time he has to waste (!) with ads now.
But it's still possible that advertisers are buying an increasing percentage of our time and attention. I would love to see a study that attempts to measure that, though it sounds like a tricky task.
I don't see where that adjusts for the exceptionally low costs of digital mediums.
For example, TV ads were terribly expensive because there was only a limited number of channels and limited number of slots. A billboard required sending a team out to put up a new sign. Radio and magazines were also somewhat limited forms of mediums which allowed their price to stay high.
Now with digital mediums where ads can be changed on the fly prices have dropped dramatically. One would assume there is a supply and demand curve that directly influences the price. This shows in online advertising where there is almost unlimited supply, the cost/payoff for each ad is very low. In mediums where the amount of advertising is fixed, the SuperBowl for example, the price for ads is at an all time high.
Perhaps, but how do we measure that?
I was surprised to learn recently that advertising for the past century has only grown at pace with GDP, i.e. it has continued to be about 1.29% or our economy: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings...
But it's still possible that advertisers are buying an increasing percentage of our time and attention. I would love to see a study that attempts to measure that, though it sounds like a tricky task.