Lisa Jackson: People haven’t changed. Their tolerance for forgettable advertising has.
By Lisa Jackson, Senior Creative at Connecting Plots Group
I remember when I first started in advertising 20 years ago. The job felt simpler then. Come up with a good idea. Make it charming, or clever, or funny, or ideally all three. Put it on TV. Let it do its thing.
People would watch it. Properly watch it. With their eyes. And their brains. Wild.
Of course, that was a while ago now. Back when TV ruled and your biggest concern was whether the idea was good enough, not whether anyone would notice it.
Fast forward to 2026, and the biggest change I’ve seen isn’t just the explosion of platforms. It’s attention. Or the slow, slightly alarming erosion of it.
The audience isn’t captive anymore
We’re busy. Not just calendar busy, brain busy. There’s always something asking for your attention. Instagram. TikTok. YouTube. Unread emails and unanswered texts. Group chats that never seem to stop. Streaming platforms that used to feel like a safe haven now serve ads mid-episode, mid-thought, mid-emotion.
And we’re not consuming things one at a time anymore. We’re watching while scrolling. Scrolling while messaging. Messaging while half‑listening to something else. I catch myself doing it constantly. Phone in hand, TV on, laptop open. None of it getting my full attention. All of it competing for it.
Constant stimulation changes us
I find myself thinking about this just as much outside of work as I do in it. Particularly as a parent. Because my son is growing up in a world where boredom is basically extinct. Every gap can be filled. Every quiet moment, replaced. Every flicker of attention redirected somewhere else.
So my husband and I made a call a few years ago. No YouTube. No phones. No computers or iPads unless it was for school work. Not in an off‑grid, anti‑tech way. Just a quiet decision that maybe his brain doesn’t need that level of constant stimulation just yet.
He wasn’t thrilled about it. Which, honestly, feels like confirmation we’re onto something.
Because you can see what constant stimulation does. It shortens your patience. It raises your expectations. It makes anything that doesn’t deliver instantly feel… skippable.
It’s the exact same dynamic playing out in how people experience advertising now. If something doesn’t earn attention, it doesn’t get it. It gets filtered out almost immediately.
Which makes the real question a bit uncomfortable. Not ‘how do we grab attention?’ But ‘do we deserve it?’
Because the truth is, our industry helped create this dynamic. We trained people to expect interruption instead of value. Speed instead of substance. More content, faster, shorter, louder.
So people adapted. They got better at filtering things out.
People aren’t tuning out. They’re opting out.
I don’t think people care less. I think they’re just exhausted by being constantly sold to. You can see it everywhere. Skip. Scroll. Mute. Close. Tune out.
Studies show most people skip ads whenever they can, millions actively use ad blockers, and many say they feel bombarded by advertising daily. Which, honestly, isn’t that surprising. People have become incredibly good at protecting their attention.
The best work gives something back.
The brands cutting through right now aren’t the ones shouting louder. They’re giving people a reason to care. Something useful. Something entertaining. Something emotionally honest. Or at the very least, something that’s not boring.
Attention isn’t automatic anymore. You have to give people a reason to hand it over.
Underneath all the noise, the job is the same
For all the change we talk about in this industry, that’s the part that feels the most significant. Because underneath the platforms, the formats, and all the noise around shrinking attention spans, the job is still the same. Understand people, have something worth saying, and say it in a way that makes someone care.
The difference now is that there’s no buffer. No guaranteed audience. No passive viewing. No benefit of the doubt. People still pay attention to things that move them. Things that entertain them. Things that feel human. They always will.
What’s changed is their tolerance for everything that doesn’t.
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