Advertising has been around longer than there have been televisions. Without ads, we wouldn’t know what products are out there. Today, we see these ads while in the comfort of our own homes, making them much more powerful than ads placed on billboards or in magazines. Here are some interesting facts about TV commercials.

Fact 1: Thursday nights have long been considered the time when movie studios and retailers use TV commercials to influence consumer behavior for the upcoming weekend.

Fact 2: In July of 2012, a study was done that showed one in five TV commercials is created to be funny, and Super Bowl ads were judged to be three times funnier than the rest.

Fact 3: By the time the average person reaches age 65 they will have seen an estimated total of 3,000,000 TV commercials.

Fact 4: If you have a child between the ages of 12 and 17 and live in America, they will ask you an average of 9 times for a product they have seen on television ‘“ until you give in.

Fact 5: Before the year 1956, all TV commercials were live. That was the year videotape recording became a reality.

Fact 6: An analysis of prime time TV showed that advertisements for alcohol products were five times more likely to be found in the programming people viewed than in the TV commercial.

Fact 7: The first TV commercial cost $9, was 20 seconds long, showed an ad for a Bulova clock, and was broadcast by WNBT, New York in July 1941, only a month after WNBT received its license to broadcast television.

Fact 8: In December of 2012, the federal government passed the CALM Act, preventing broadcasters from increasing the volume during TV commercials. It was the FCC’s number one complaint over the last ten years.

Fact 9: The most expensive TV commercial ever produced was a Guinness beer ad that featured no
Celebrities and had no special effects and cost 20 million dollars to make.

Fact 10: According to a study done by Princeton University about TV commercials, the majority of ads on network and cable TV fell into five major categories: sugar coated cereals, sugared drinks, snacks, and fast foods.