# 5 Advertising mistakes your brand is probably making - URL: https://www.askattest.com/blog/research/5-advertising-mistakes-your-brand-is-probably-making - Published: 2026-08-18 - Description: Our latest media consumption research reveals five ad mistakes brands are making in 2026, and what the data says to do about each one. --- Ask a media planner where attention is going today, and the conversation still tends to start with TV and streaming. Ask the data, and a less comfortable picture turns up, one where a meaningful share of every ad buy is skipped, muted, or delivered to someone already looking at their phone. Attest’s 2026 media consumption report has uncovered five gaps between how brands buy attention and how audiences actually give it. These are structural issues in how advertising is planned and bought right now, and they’re costing budgets that could be working harder. ## TL:DR - Creator platforms have already overtaken TV and streaming combined in both markets, yet budgets often still treat them as a secondary channel. - Only around one in eight people give TV their full, undivided attention; most are on a second screen at the same time. - Non-skippable ads don’t guarantee a captive audience; most people redirect their attention elsewhere or mute the sound instead. - Ad tolerance has a hard frequency ceiling in both markets, and pushing past it costs more attention than it earns. - AI-generated ad creative is a specific, measurable risk with Gen Z audiences, not a safe, blanket cost-saving move. ## Mistake 1: Treating TV and streaming as the whole battlefield In the US, YouTube, TikTok and social video combined now account for 3 hours 54 minutes of the average person’s day, more than live TV and subscription streaming combined at 3 hours 20 minutes. In the UK, the same shift shows up at a smaller scale but the same shape: 3 hours 8 minutes on creator platforms against 2 hours 56 minutes on TV and streaming together. YouTube alone has already overtaken live TV outright in the US, 1 hour 46 minutes against 1 hour 31 minutes, and in the UK it’s running almost neck and neck with it, 1 hour 16 minutes against 1 hour 18 minutes. Brands that still plan around TV and streaming as the primary battleground, with creator platforms treated as a supporting or experimental channel, are misreading where the time already is, not where it might go next. ## Mistake 2: Assuming a TV buy earns full attention Reach and attention aren’t the same claim, and the gap between them is wide. Only about one in eight people give TV their full, undivided attention in either market, 12% in the US and 13% in the UK. The rest are second-screening, most commonly scrolling social media, 43% in the US and 46% in the UK. That isn’t necessarily lost attention, it’s redirected attention, to a phone screen a TV creative can’t currently reach. Buying reach without accounting for what a meaningful share of that audience is doing at the same time means paying full price for partial attention. ### 2026 US media consumption report Creator platforms have overtaken TV and streaming combined for daily viewing. Learn what this evolution in entertainment means for your media planning. [Download the report](https://www.askattest.com/our-research/2026-us-media-consumption-report) ![](https://emx2zzfzxax.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/US_2026_Media_Consumption_transparent.png?strip=all) ## Mistake 3: Relying on non-skippable placements to guarantee attention It’s tempting to treat a non-skippable ad slot as a solved problem: the ad plays, so it must be seen. The data says otherwise. When people can’t skip an ad, only 44% in the US and 35% in the UK say they continue watching as intended, the rest redirect their attention elsewhere or mute the sound entirely. Forcing an ad to play secures a technical impression, not a watched one, and in both markets, younger viewers are the least willing to cooperate even when the skip button isn’t there. ## Mistake 4: Ignoring the frequency ceiling on ad tolerance People in both markets say ad breaks becomes excessive at roughly every 14 to 15 minutes on streamed TV, and about every 12 minutes on social video. These are thresholds that barely move by age, gender or income. That consistency, across two different countries and a wide range of demographics, makes this closer to a fixed rule than a soft guideline. This doesn’t just apply to capping the frequency that your own ads are shown; overall ad frequency matters too. If someone’s viewing experience is interrupted every two minutes, they will have substantially less patience for your ad when it appears. Pushing frequency past the threshold isn’t buying extra reach, it’s buying disengagement instead, so make sure you understand each platform’s ad load before you buy. ### 2026 UK media consumption report Creator platforms have overtaken TV and streaming combined for daily viewing. Learn what this evolution in entertainment means for your media planning. [Download the report](https://www.askattest.com/our-research/2026-uk-media-consumption-report) ![](https://emx2zzfzxax.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/UK_2026_Media_Consumption_transparent.png?strip=all) ## Mistake 5: Treating AI-generated ad creative as a safe, blanket cost-saver AI-generated advertising is being adopted partly on the promise of cheaper, faster production, but the audience most associated with using AI in their own lives is also the most skeptical of it in ads. In the US, 35% of Gen Z cite AI-generated ads as a reason to disengage from advertising, against just 17-18% of every other generation. In the UK, the gap is nearly as wide, 33% of Gen Z against 20-22% of everyone else. Rolling out AI-generated creative uniformly, without weighing that risk against a campaign’s actual audience, risks saving money on production while quietly losing the attention of exactly the audience many brands are trying hardest to reach. ## What this means for brands Every mistake here comes down to the same underlying error: mistaking a metric that’s easy to buy and report – reach, frequency, an impression – for the thing that actually matters; attention that’s freely given. None of this means TV, streaming, non-skippable formats or AI-generated creative are the wrong choices in themselves. It means the numbers behind each of them need a harder look before budget follows. Splitting spend to reflect where time has actually moved, planning creative for a second screen that’s already open, respecting a real frequency ceiling, and testing AI-generated creative against younger audiences specifically before scaling it are five concrete, evidence-backed adjustments any brand can make without waiting for a bigger strategic overhaul. ## Get the full picture These five findings are only a starting point. Download Attest’s 2026 US and UK media consumption reports for the full picture behind each one, along with the generational, income and platform-level detail that didn’t make it into this piece. ## Methodology These findings draw on two studies: a nationally representative survey of 1,000 US adults aged 18-66, and a nationally representative survey of 1,000 UK adults aged 18-64, both fielded in June 2026. Each is underpinned by five years of Attest’s own quarterly media habits tracking in its respective market, surveying 1,000 adults each quarter since 2022. All differences reported as significant have been tested at the standard 95% confidence level.