The television advertising landscape has never been more challenging for marketers. Once captive, television viewers now have a variety of tools that allow them to tune out commercials, including remote controls, DVRs and alternative screens on smartphones and tablets. Perhaps in the hope of capturing viewers’ attention in this competitive environment, television commercials have become increasingly high-energy — colorful, noisy, and often upbeat with enthusiastic narrators and spokespeople. When we analyzed commercials on the ad-supported video service Hulu, for example, we found that more than 80% of the commercials were what could safely be described as “energetic.”