It is get­ting increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to reach con­sumers with adver­tis­ing while they watch TV, which high­lights the oblig­a­tion of brands to cre­ate con­tent that is relat­able, fun­ny, con­tains good audio, and is on mul­ti­ple screens. That’s accord­ing to a new study from AOL.

Ear­li­er this year, Deloitte’s Dig­i­tal Democ­ra­cy Sur­vey found 86 per­cent of con­sumers are mul­ti­task­ing while they watch TV.

In addi­tion, Deloitte said less than one-quar­ter of these mul­ti­task­ing activ­i­ties are direct­ly relat­ed to the pro­grams con­sumers are watch­ing.

In oth­er words, con­sumers are dis­tract­ed while they watch TV.

In a more recent study, AOL, which says it want­ed to “quan­ti­fy the impact divert­ed atten­tion has on adver­tis­ing,” found this so-called dis­tract­ed view­ing has a pro­found impact on adver­tis­ers.

One such effect: dis­tract­ed view­ing reduces brand recall by more than half. Less than a quar­ter of view­ers could remem­ber a brand’s ad when dis­tract­ed by anoth­er con­nect­ed device while watch­ing TV, which was the worst per­form­ing plat­form, accord­ing to AOL.

In addi­tion, AOL found low­er recall makes it more dif­fi­cult to shift brand atti­tudes and it makes it much hard­er for brands to influ­ence pur­chase deci­sions. What’s more, AOL says Gen­er­a­tion Y is more like­ly to get dis­tract­ed when con­sum­ing video con­tent than oth­er demo­graph­ics. As a result, it takes 148 impres­sions in prime­time TV to have the same ROI as 100 impres­sions in short-form video con­tent, accord­ing to AOL.

The study also found women are more dis­tract­ed than men.

“Women just mul­ti­task more,” said Cort­ney Hensel­er, direc­tor of con­sumer insights at AOL. “We are very adept at doing that and doing more mul­ti-task­ing is the main rea­son we need more impres­sions from TV.”

So what does this mean for brands?

Alma Der­ricks, direc­tor at Deloitte, was opti­mistic in the ear­li­er study.

“Even with so much frag­men­ta­tion in the mar­ket, there’s an enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­tal­ize on these behav­iors and cre­ate offer­ings that engage con­sumers in new, mean­ing­ful ways,” Der­ricks said.

For its part, AOL says mea­sure­ment meth­ods need to adapt to frag­ment­ed atten­tion.

Con­ve­nient­ly, AOL says it has devel­oped “the first sys­tem for mea­sur­ing this effect called the Video Ad Atten­tion Index,” or what it calls “the first con­cert­ed, sci­en­tif­ic, sur­vey-based effort to mea­sure and tack­le this very real issue for mar­keters and adver­tis­ers.”

Accord­ing to Hensel­er, “The met­ric is meant to be a liv­ing, breath­ing tool…[that is] a very inter­est­ing way to quan­ti­fy what that impact is to con­sumers when we think about all that mul­ti­task­ing.”

In addi­tion, Hensel­er says brands need to under­stand that dis­tract­ed view­ing hap­pens and use a tool like this AOL met­ric to think about how they com­mu­ni­cate with con­sumers and “what they can do to try to push through the dis­trac­tion and get aware­ness,” she says. “We do know anec­do­tal­ly that if it’s things that con­sumers are inter­est­ed in, they will pay more atten­tion,” although she acknowl­edges that’s a dif­fi­cult thing for brands to nec­es­sar­i­ly know.

How­ev­er, she also notes that when con­sumers are mul­ti­task­ing, audio can help trig­ger them in.

“If it’s real­ly great, engag­ing [or] fun­ny music, it can draw [con­sumers] back into the ad itself,” Hensel­er notes. But, again, she notes it’s “real­ly sub­jec­tive to the con­sumer.”

To wit: In the AOL study, 50 per­cent of respon­dents said music in ads gets their atten­tion on TV and 75 per­cent of respon­dents said humor gets their atten­tion.

In addi­tion, she says tablets and smart­phones are less impact­ed by dis­trac­tion over­all because they are “more per­son­al and clos­er to your face.”

In oth­er words, tar­get­ing mul­ti­ple screens can also help brands cut through the noise. Cer­tain TV pro­gram­ming, such as live sports, is also not as impact­ed by dis­trac­tions as oth­er shows.

“It’s hard to blan­ket­ly say, ‘Spend less [on TV],’” Hensel­er says. “But this does show that TV is not as effec­tive as oth­er medi­ums and it is some­thing to think about – to diver­si­fy the mix of screens and get the most val­ue from ad val­ue. The more places [a brand has] to diver­si­fy where it com­mu­ni­cates to con­sumers, the bet­ter.”