I’ve decided today is the day I count ads to determine how many advertising messages the average consumer is exposed to in a 24 hour period. I slept in so I hope that doesn’t skew the numbers. In fact, to get a better control I’d better do it over a few days. That’s going to hurt. If anyone else is interested in helping me with the data feel free to pipe up. I’m using a tally counter application on my iPhone to assist the number crunching (no, that’s not an ad), so if you’ve got an iPhone and some spare time, your industry needs you.

The definition of an ad is a paid commercial spot. A logo doesn’t count, unless it’s been paid to be in that position, so the word ‘Dell’ on my computer doesn’t count (and it doesn’t count in that sentence) but the 3 logo on the Australian cricket team uniforms does count, but only once, because they’ve paid to have their logo on all the uniforms in one go, not per uniform. By the same token, if I’m watching the cricket on the TV, I can only count each billboard once, same goes for the little Ford logo that pops up with each score - they’re not paying per score, they’re paying for the spot in the day.

I’m about an hour in to the exercise so far and I’m only up to 91 ads. It’s not looking good for the textbook figure of 3,000. I’m off for a walk to work and back and then I’m going to read a few magazine pages, a newspaper and listen to some commercial radio. We’ll see how we go, wish me luck!