MindShare: Most Moms Skip Television Ads

Busy moms apparently aren’t willing to waste their “me time” watching television commercials.

According to new research from MindShare that focused on American mothers, reading, surfing the web and watching television were the top me-time - or personal down-time - activities, and 91 percent of the mothers surveyed said they do not watch commercials when viewing recorded programming via DVRs, writes Adweek. (Network estimates tend to put the number of viewers who skip ads between 50 percent and 60 percent.)

56 percent of those polled said their me-time was most likely to occur in late evening; 18 percent said early morning - though 25 percent of women with kids ages 13-17 said early mornings were the time of day they were most likely to have to themselves.

More stats:

• Word of mouth was the most popular form of “entertainment media,” with nearly 80 percent rating it as the highest, among mothers of kids under 2 years old. TV was the second-highest at 75 percent, with email at 73 percent.
• For mothers of kids ages 3 or older, TV was the most popular form of entertainment media, followed by email and word of mouth.
• 10 percent of those polled play online games regularly; about one third of those play daily.
• Non-working mothers reported the highest level of email use, general research and transactions; part-time working mothers reported the least.
• Not surprisingly, full-time working mothers report the highest cellphone use, at 28 percent, while part-time working moms are the lightest users at 20 percent.
• Part-time working moms are the ones who feel the most stressed in their daily lives.

A recent Keller Fay study conducted for BabyCenter found that new moms and pregnant women have over 109 word-of-mouth conversations per week about products, services, and brands, most of them positive and considered highly credible by other moms. Per day, the group engages in one-third more word-of-mouth conversation than the total public or women in general, the study found.