A new study says that viewers seem to pay less attention to creative TV ads. The finding overturns the long-held assumption that ads with emotional content encourage viewers to be more attentive.

An eye-tracking device was used in the study to measure the real-time attention paid to a range of ads with varying levels of emotional content.

The ads were embedded in an episode of the sitcom Frasier and the participants were totally unaware that advertising was the subject of the research.

More attention was given to factual information-giving ads even when viewers didn't like them and they paid less attention to likeable, creative ads, the results showed.

"In a relaxed situation like TV watching, attention tends to be used mainly as a defence mechanism. If an ad bombards us with new information, our natural response is to pay attention so we can counter-argue what it is telling us, said Robert Heath of the Bath University School of Management, who led the study.

Heath said," On the other hand, if we feel we like and enjoy an ad, we tend to be more trustful of it and therefore we don't feel we need to pay too much attention to it. The sting in the tail is that by paying less attention, we are less able to counter-argue what the ad is communicating. In effect, we let our guard down and leave ourselves more open to the advertiser's message."

The research was carried out with Agnes Nairn, professor of marketing at EM-Lyon Business School and research fellow at the Bath's School of Management, and Paul Bottomley, distinguished research fellow at Cardiff University's Business School. (With Input from Agencies)