Most ads today go unseen or ignored, costing advertisers millions. Advertising occurs across a wide variety of media formats, including digital and out-of-home channels such as television, social media, online banner ads, and billboards. The choice of media format, regardless of the ad’s quality, strongly influences ad effectiveness. Relying on low-attention or “dull” environments, where consumers tend to ignore or passively view ads, can result in substantial waste because many ads underperform in these contexts [1].
At Convenience Advertising, we offer a solution to these ineffective formats. Our bathroom advertising appears in over 3,200 venues across Australia, receiving approximately 26 million visits per week.
In this article, we outline the specific barriers that digital advertising poses to ad effectiveness. Next, we compare ad effectiveness metrics, including recall rates and exposure duration, between our format and others. Recall rate refers to the proportion of recipients who can remember an ad, its message, or brand. Exposure duration refers to the amount of time an ad is visible or accessible to a consumer. Finally, we explain why Convenience Advertising achieves higher ad effectiveness metrics than other formats using the capacity theory of attention.
The capacity theory of attention states that individuals have a finite amount of cognitive resources, which is the total information they can attend to at once. Ad effectiveness depends on whether consumers have enough spare attention to process the advertisement.
This can happen for various reasons, such as users having ad blockers, small browser windows, or needing to scroll to view the ad [2].
Essentially, half of online ads that advertisers pay for are being thrown straight in the bin, resulting in a huge waste of money.
Active attention occurs when viewers look directly at an ad, while passive attention occurs when the ad is on-screen, but the viewer’s gaze is elsewhere. Active attention is roughly seven times more influential than passive attention for outcomes such as ad message retention.
Low attention media formats are ad environments where consumers pay little attention because the content is easy to ignore or passively consumed, for example online banner ads or fast-scrolling social media feeds, where users often skim past content without processing it.
The Cost of Dull Media project found that even the most compelling ad creatives underperform in low-attention media formats. On average, advertisers lose 72 cents (USD) of every dollar spent when high-quality creative runs in these environments.
The project also found that the choice of media format explains approximately 65–70% of the variation in ad effectiveness, highlighting that selecting the right format is critical for achieving strong results [3].
Figure 1. Schematic illustrating how only 40–50% of digital ads that are served are viewable, with an even smaller proportion receiving active attention, highlighting major barriers to ad effectiveness [4].
Digital ad environments are often overcrowded, with multiple brands and messages competing for attention on the same screen.
This clutter makes it difficult for consumers to focus on any single ad. It has been shown to lower brand recall and ad retention, as audiences are distracted by competing content or simply skim past ads without processing them.
Even well-designed ads underperform in cluttered environments, highlighting that ad effectiveness depends not only on creative quality but also on the context in which the ad appears [4].
The average time spent in bathrooms is at least two minutes, which provides a guaranteed exposure window for Convenience Advertising [5].
Across social platforms in 2025, average attention per post is approximately 8.25 seconds, underscoring how brief exposure typically is on digital feeds [6].
Short-form social media ads, such as those on TikTok or Instagram, are typically under one minute, but more than 80% of viewers drop off within the first quarter, meaning that advertisers may be paying for millions of reported views when in reality only about 1% of viewers actually complete the ad [7].
Within this landscape, typical exposure times are extremely short: Instagram video ads are effectively watched for around 4.99 seconds before users scroll away; Facebook video ads average 3–6 seconds; Facebook static ads average 1.7–2.5 seconds per impression; and LinkedIn ads attract 4–8 seconds [8][9][10].
Therefore, our bathroom advertising provides a valuable alternative to short-form social media ads by increasing the time consumers are exposed to the ad, since it cannot be skipped or ignored. In practical terms, each bathroom impression delivers far more exposure time than a standard social impression
Convenience Advertising has a minimum unprompted recall rate of 70%, meaning that at least 70% of people exposed to the ad could later state what it was when asked, indicating they paid attention and processed it [11].
Online banner ads have much lower recall, with rates around 10%, while 34% of participants did not remember seeing an ad at all [12].
Billboards show recall rates ranging from 15–64%. Smart billboards (electronic billboards that rotate multiple ads) have lower recall, 6–35%, likely because quick rotations limit the time available to process the ad message [13]. Notably, even the highest recall reported for traditional or smart billboards is below the minimum recall rate observed for Convenience Advertising.
Social media recall is similarly limited. Facebook video and static ads are remembered by 8–15% of viewers, Facebook Stories and other short-form content by 10–18%, and LinkedIn ads by 10–20% [8].
Taken together, this shows that Convenience Advertising consistently achieves substantially higher recall than digital, billboard, or social media formats, making it the most effective option for ensuring ads are both seen and remembered.
The capacity theory of attention proposes that ad effectiveness depends on whether the consumer has enough spare attentional resources available to process it, which is influenced by the context in which the ad appears.
Example: Someone driving along a quiet freeway may have more spare attention than someone navigating busy city streets, making them more likely to process and recall a billboard ad.
Considering whether the advertising channel and consumer are stationary or moving helps explain why bathroom advertising tends to have higher recall rates compared to other forms of advertising [14].
Figure 2. Comparison of how the movement of advertisements and consumers (stationary vs. moving) affects consumers’ ability to process ads, mediated by available and required cognitive resources [14].
Our bathroom advertising falls into the first quadrant of Figure 2. Consumers remain stationary in public bathrooms while using the toilet or urinal, washing their hands, and drying them. The advertisement itself is fixed to the back of a stall door or on a wall. Therefore, our ads provide an opportunity to be fully processed because they require little cognitive effort, and consumers typically have spare attention while completing low-demand tasks like handwashing. In some cases, the ad may even be found entertaining given the lack of competing stimuli in bathrooms. This attentional environment contributes to the minimum 70% unprompted recall rate consistently achieved with Convenience Advertising [15].
Online banner ads and regular billboards fall into quadrant 3, where the consumer is moving relative to a stationary ad. For online ads, the consumer is “moving” by scrolling through content or switching between pages, while for billboards, consumers are usually walking, driving, or using public transport. The limited attentional resources of a mobile consumer likely contribute to the lower recall rates observed for both online banner ads and regular billboards.
Smart billboards and short-form social media ads fall into quadrant 4, the environment with the lowest potential ad effectiveness. For smart billboards, the consumer is moving (walking, driving, or on public transport) while the ad rotates through multiple messages. For short-form social media ads, the consumer moves by swiping and scrolling, and the ad is also dynamic. This combination of a moving consumer, which limits attentional resources, and a moving ad, which demands more cognitive effort to process, likely explains the particularly low recall rates for smart billboards and the high early drop-off for short-form social media ads.
Therefore, the capacity theory of attention explains why our bathroom advertising achieves higher recall rates than other formats. The combination of a stationary consumer and a stationary ad allows for spare attention and minimal cognitive effort. This makes Convenience Advertising a particularly promising avenue for effective advertising.
Advertising effectiveness depends not only on the message but on the format. Our bathroom advertising at Convenience Advertising provides a distraction-free environment where consumers can fully process messages, driving higher recall than many digital and out-of-home formats. Advertisers should critically evaluate online channels given their low viewability, limited attention, and misleading metrics from early drop-off. Integrating our bathroom advertising into campaigns offers a highly promising strategy to ensure messages are actually seen, processed, and remembered.
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[1] Nelson-Field, K., Morgan, A. and Field, P., 2025. The eye-watering cost of dull media. Amplified Intelligence. Available at: https://www.amplified.co/resources/cost-of-dull
[2] Ratcliff, S., 2021. COVID-19 narrowcast messaging. University of Sydney. Available at: https://convenienceadvertising.com.au/research
[3] Nelson-Field, K., Morgan, A. and Field, P., 2025. The eye-watering cost of dull media. Amplified Intelligence. Available at: https://www.amplified.co/resources/cost-of-dull
[4] Ha, L. S. Y. (2008). The impact of advertising clutter on the attempts of advertisers to gain the attention of audiences. Journal of Advertising Research, 48(4), 570–580. https://doi.org/10.2501/S0021849908080563
[5] Gwynne, S.M.V., Hunt, A.L.E., Thomas, J.R., Thompson, A.J.L. and Séguin, L., 2019. The toilet paper: Bathroom dwell time observations at an airport. Journal of Building Engineering, 24, p.100751. doi: 10.1016/j.jobe.2019.100751.
[6] Thakur, T. (2025) ‘Social Media Attention Span Statistics 2025: By Platform, Age, and Content Type’, SQ Magazine
[7] Salminen, J., Yang, Y., Wahid, R. and Jansen, B.J., 2024. Engagement patterns in TikTok: An analysis of short video ads. ACM Digital Library. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3648188.3677048
[8] Facebook ad Logicserve News Desk (2018) Facebook’s video ads’ watch time – how it works across different formats, LS Digital [online]
[9] Feehan, B. (2024) 2024 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, Rival IQ [online], 28 February.
[10] Feehan, B. (2024) 2024 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. Rival IQ [online], 28 February.
[11] Ratcliff, S., 2021. COVID-19 narrowcast messaging. University of Sydney. Available at: https://convenienceadvertising.com.au/research
[12] Khattab, L. and Mahrous, A.A., 2016. Revisiting online banner advertising recall: An experimental study of the factors affecting banner recall in an Arab context. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 9(2), pp.237–249. doi: 10.1386/jammr.9.2.237_1
[13] Osborne, A.C. and Coleman, R., 2012. Outdoor advertising recall: A comparison of newer technology and traditional billboards. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 30(1), pp.13–30. doi: 10.1080/10641734.2008.10505235.
[14] Wilson, R.T. and Till, B.D., 2019. Managing advertising in non-traditional environments: A message processing framework. In: S. Rodgers and E. Thorson, eds. Advertising theory. Routledge. Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351208314-7/managing-advertising-non-traditional-environments-rick-wilson-brian-till
[15] Ratcliff, S., 2021. COVID-19 narrowcast messaging. University of Sydney. Available at: https://convenienceadvertising.com.au/research
