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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

How Ads Affect Our Memory

New research could help advertisers make a better impression.

By Andrew Schrock

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Credit: Technology Review

A new study suggests that marketers shouldn't fixate on the number of people who click on ads. According to the research, just seeing an ad on a Web page can impact memory. The findings could have a significant impact on the way online advertising is made and metered.

Typically, to be considered effective, an online advertisement has to elicit a response--usually a click of the mouse--from a potential customer. But Chan Yun Yoo, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky's School of Journalism and Telecommunications, found that when people view Web advertisements, they store information in two different types of memory: explicit and implicit.

Explicit memory involves facts learned through conscious interaction, while implicit memory involves unconscious retention. Explicitly remembered information includes ad slogans, product benefits, and website addresses. In contrast, implicit memory might only come into play when external stimuli trigger concepts. For instance, a consumer might only recall a brand of toothpaste from a television ad when he or she discovers it while browsing in a store. Or the consumer might develop an unconscious affinity for a certain brand despite not knowing specific facts about it.

Subjects who paid attention to a banner advertisement were more likely than those who didn't to recall whole words and facts from the ad--facts stored in explicit memory. All ads had the same level of impact in the unconscious explicit memory, however, whether or not they'd been clicked. Yoo's findings are relevant because they challenge the assumption that online advertising is only effective when it gets a direct response from the viewer. His study was published in the spring 2007 edition of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.

Donna Hoffman, codirector of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at the University of California, Riverside, says that Yoo's research applies traditional ideas about media impact to the Internet. In other mediums, such as television, advertisers do not typically assume that audience members will interact with the ad. Hoffman says the notion that banner ads may have some impact on perception begs the question, "What are the most effective ways to advertise in the new medium?"

Yoo says that the implications of his work are twofold: advertisers "need to reconsider the objectives of Web advertising" and use "impression-based metrics more than performance-based metrics when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of Web advertising." Click-through rates, which represent the percentage of people who clicked on an ad after viewing it, might be useful to determine whether an ad elicited an immediate response. But ad impressions--that is, the number of times an ad is displayed--might be a better measure of the impact required to build a brand image.

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Comments

  • Finally, someone applies logic to Internet analytics
    Yellowwoods on 08/25/2007 at 2:33 PM
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    Over the last 35 years, I've owned ad agencies and magazines (both print and online). The argument that an advertising campaign's effectiveness in an online magazine can mainly be measured by click-throughs has always struck me as specious logic. Bravo to you, Professor Chan Yun Yoo! You have put research and hard data behind what many of us knew to be true all along: the power of the medium cannot be measured only by the direct responses it generates for a client. As David Ogilvy once said: "Every communications from a client to a potential customer is an investment in the BRAND." At any one time, the readers of a magazine will be situated somewhere along the continuum of The Hierarchy of Effects. For certain some of them will be ready to click the online ad and buy the client's product or service. Many more, however, will be at another stage in the learning/buying cycle. For them to merely view the ad and take in whatever impression they are able to absorb in that moment—possibly to move closer towards a buying decision--is what the entire marketing business is all about. Those awareness-building impressions are ultimately as critical and valuable to the client as any others. Without an increasingly large base of awareness and predisposition towards a client’s brand—well, adios. Relying on the click-through model as the primary measure of a campaign's impact shows little understanding of how buying decisions are truly made and it diminishes the online magazine's editorial environment as a powerful enhancer to the advertiser's message and product/service offerings.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • Good old discussion
    alexhar on 09/05/2007 at 1:34 AM
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    This merely reiterates the age old discussion between brand and direct marketing advertising. Such reiteration is timely. The internet was initially viewed as an e-commerce, sales channel...hence DM type metrics is of key importance.

    Increasingly we are, especially with the growth of the socialized media beginning to recognise the brand impact that web marketing can create.

    The traditional set of metrics for branding...awareness, recognition, recall becomes more relevant. Traditionally these measures are obtained through periodic marketing research in which an additional process and cost is involved.   The challenge for web marketers is to develop methods of measuring these on the flow. Like marketing research of any kind, this will require some form of response from the target audience though not necessarily in direct response to a particular comuunication.

    A greater challenge lies in trying to integrate  the two sets of measures, Branding and Direct Marketing.  At Systems Strategists, we have been experimenting with dynamic simulation models for usch purposes and would like to share our thoughts on this with other interested parties. Do contact through our website at http://one1.com.sg      
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  • Definitions
    johnrosen2 on 10/11/2007 at 10:24 PM
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    I hate to sound pedantic, but, as a former marketing director for Webster's New World Dictionary, I feel obligated to point out that the previous commenter simply illustrated why the two disciplines are referred to as "online ADVERTISING" and "Direct MARKETING."
    Rate this comment: 12345
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