Our always-on media world is creating more and more channels which, in turn, creates more and more advertising opportunities. And the downside? It’s actually stressing out the people (audiences) advertising is trying to engage with.

That’s the view of Tyler Greer head of strategy at Melbourne-based marketing and advertising firm Exponential.

“A recent study out of the US said the fifth highest cause of stress in peoples’ lives is advertising,” Greer said. “We’re overwhelmed by the world by advertising and we hope that we make an impact. But the advertising industry knows more channels means more opportunities to put advertising out there and hit people over the head as much as we can because reach and frequency matters. Hit those people with as much frequency as you can and that will be good for my brand, right?

“At the same time something has happened to brands. Brands have worked out that creating a lot of content, a lot of galleries, a lot of two-way conversations, a lot of videos has some inherent value. Somehow it will find its way through the clutter and find an audience,” he said.

According to Greer what brands need is engagement and by that he means the amount of time that a consumer actually spends connecting with a brand.

There has to be a better way of advertising and engaging with customers particularly with the multiple channels and multiple screens available these days, Greer said.

“So brands need a distribution model and fortunately we’ve got thousands of channels we can deliver out to market. So once again more clutter, more advertising, more exploitataion of channels, more inserting ourselves into the daily lives of people and pushing us (the ad industry) up the rank of what stresses people out the most.

“Advertisers need to build their creative display, they need to serve it that way, we need models that allow us to do that as well, to report on it and measure success and failure by this as well.

“Engagement will rise to the top of the value chain not because it can but because it must. And the only thing that matters now is the time spent between the consumer and brands,” he said.