This study, called Ad’titude Tracker was performed in 2017 by bpost in collaboration with Deepblue and AQrate. It looks into Belgians’ attitudes regarding various media channels including in-home, traditional and digital.

The key highlights from the study are:

  • Bad news for digital channels – online display, emails and social media ads are adapted to, but perform badly in terms of all other indicators
  • In-home advertising (direct mail and folders) are seen as significantly less interruptive and overabundant compared to digital advertising
  • 48% avoid email ads while only 21% avoid direct mail
  • Only 4% of Belgians always throw away their DM (addressed mail ads) while 28% always use a special email address for ads and 32% always use an online adblocker

In terms of perception of consumers towards advertising by media category, the in-home advertising (direct mail and folders) was seen as the least interruptive and overabundant. On the other hand, it was perceived to be informative, convincing and enjoyable.

Below you’ll find the detailed overview of key media surveyed and the statements Belgians associated with them. One striking finding is that digital media and telemarketing score significantly worse in terms of being perceived as convincing or enjoyable.

 

 

Advertising avoidance by media is shown in the following chart. In terms of direct mail, 21% of surveyed consumers were always using at least one avoidance technique. When email was considered, as much as 48% of Belgians said that they always used at least one avoidance technique.

 

Online data tool

Registered users can play around with the data and segment it by attitude, media, age, gender, families with children, language, PRP and social class.

 

 

Methodology

Phase 1

The field part of this study took place in 2 phases, between June and November 2017: a qualitative phase, done by the agency ‘Think to the point’, with four discussion groups all over the territory.

Phase 2

 

And a quantitative phase, done by AQrate, for which a sample of 2,008 persons, representative of the Belgian population, aged between 18 and 64 years old, have been interviewed.

Access the study results at www.adtitude.be