On April 15, 2025, ad agency Sine Digital released the results of a study that revealed the financial burden of serving “dull” ads online. Based on five years of internal advertising data, the study, titled “Meh: The Cost of Dull Entertainment Advertising,” concluded that 27 percent of annual media spend is wasted on serving boring ads.
“The Cost of Dull” is an ongoing study started by renowned marketing professionals Adam Morgan, founder and chair of brand marketing firm eatbigfish, and Peter Field, an independent consultant. The research investigates the performance and impact of, specifically, boring advertising across multiple industries. Sine built on this study, contributing data from its own clients in the field of live entertainment and, more precisely, Broadway and the West End. In addition to formally joining the larger study, Sine received input from Morgan and Fish.
Sine has been collecting and storing data about the ads for its U.K. and U.S. clients since 2019. On Broadway, Sine has handled digital marketing for 15 Broadway shows, including “Back to the Future,” 2023’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” 2024’s “Romeo + Juliet,” “All In” and the current “Call Me Izzy.” Sine’s data warehouse holds billions of rows of information, according to Dale and Sine CTO Jake Bowser. “The primary database we used for the research is organized in rows that each represent a single ad served on a specific platform, in a single campaign, to a single audience, on a single day,” Bowser explained. “For example, a specific ad appearing on Instagram for a particular client on a given date. Such a row includes the video, ad copy, date, campaign details, approximately 100 performance metrics and around 500 tags reflecting different video characteristics.”
Analyzing this collection (according to a variety of metrics that we’ll get into), Sine has concluded that “there’s a misconception around what good [effective] creative is,” said Dale. “Something I really want to stress for this study is: This is not a critique of anyone’s work. This is just data in terms of how audiences respond.”
Sine’s data shows that dull ads cost more than engaging ones, leading to wasted spending and/or loss of revenue.
