Why TV is Important for a Brand’s Ad Recall

Despite prominent platforms like TikTok and YouTube catching the attention of many consumers with their advertisements, television continues to be the driving force for brands to be recognised, providing memorable ads for consumers especially when in large gatherings.

In March, SUBTV traveled to the annual Trends In TV event hosted by Thinkbox. At the event, they discussed viewing and advertising data from 2024, spending trends and the future of TV advertising.

According to Thinkbox, the TV screen is the most influential format for consumers to remember a brand and its message compared to other devices. For example, TV drives the highest advertisement recall with 60% more engagement than a smartphone or tablet. The big screen has 34% more advertisement recall from consumers compared to a computer (Thinkbox, 2025).

Most importantly, viewing of advertisements amongst a large gathering causes an increase of 23% in advertisement recall (Thinkbox, 2025). Television genres like sports, drama and documentary bring more people together rather than user-generated content. This affects the mood of people in the room more positively, with happy and less stressed people noticing more advertisements. People don’t gather to watch TV, they watch TV to gather.

At SUBTV, we prioritise putting our TVs in venues where young adults go to socialise with their friends and have a drink at their Uni’s student union. Most recently, our 6 Nations campaign throughout the UK has increased footfall in many of the venues we work with while driving up engagement with our company adverts on screen.  

Our playlists at SUBTV are specifically curated to influence the mood of our audience throughout the week. Therefore, with our music putting people in a good mood while socialising with others, it helps our target audience recall our advertisements.

Young adult viewers watch established broadcaster content for high-quality content. The young adult target audience spent on average one hour and fifty-three minutes watching broadcaster TV, SVOD/AVOD and Video-Sharing Services (Thinkbox, 2025). Most of that time is dedicated towards high-quality TV content.

However, it is crucial for brands to recognise that with the presence of these SVOD/AVOD and Video-Sharing Service platforms, it is more difficult for their ads to reach the target audience of consumers between the ages of 16-34 on TV.

Unlike traditional VOD platforms, SUBTV is OOH TV, delivering curated content to students at Unis across the UK. While VOD services are more personalised for individual viewers, SUBTV’s approach is to provide a shared and immersive viewing experience with our audience.

Our channel lets brands and content creators to have a direct line of communication to many young adults in a setting where they are more receptive and engaged to what is being shown to them on our TVs.

Despite the difficulty to reach the younger target audience, choosing to remove TV in totality would not be the best possible option for brands. TV remains a vital lifeline to a brand’s financial success.

Hypothetically, if brands removed their ads from TV they would acquire 24% less profit compared to reducing the budget optimally (Thinkbox, 2025). Sub-optimal budget reductions put up to £28B of profit at risk (Thinkbox, 2025).

Removing TV would significantly impact the performance of response channels. When the TV is on air, digital channel performance is uplifted by 13.7% meaning there is more engagement between brands ad customers, creating more brand awareness (Thinkbox, 2025).

Although SUBTV recognises there is a competition to catch the attention of the younger audience, we also recognise that TV is still a significant contributor to a brand’s success. Therefore, we curate our content to act as a trigger for engagement when we provide memorable advertising.