Effects of color as an executional cue in advertising: they're in the shade
Management Science
Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Ad Gist: Ad Communication in a Single Eye Fixation
Marketing Science
Marketing Science
Attention to Banner Ads and Their Effectiveness: An Eye-Tracking Approach
International Journal of Electronic Commerce
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Rising levels of advertising competition have made it increasingly difficult to attract and hold consumers' attention and to establish strong memory traces for the advertised brand. A common communication strategy to break through this competitive clutter is to increase ad originality. However, ad originality may have detrimental effects when consumers pay more attention to the ad at the expense of the advertised brand. Moreover, the positive effects of originality may quickly wane when the ad becomes familiar. Surprisingly, no research to date has examined such brand attention and memory effects of ad originality and familiarity. The current study aims to fill this void. We use a stochastic model of the influence that ad originality and familiarity have on consumers' eye fixations to the key elements of advertisements--brand, text, and pictorial--and how the information extracted during eye fixations promotes memory for the advertised brand. The model explicitly accounts for heterogeneity due to consumers and advertisements. Infrared eye tracking was applied to collect eye fixation data from 119 consumers who paged through two general-audience magazines containing 58 full-page advertisements. Memory for the advertised brands was assessed with an indirect memory task. The model was estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. In support of our hypotheses, original advertisements drew more attention to the advertised brand. More importantly however, advertisements that were both original and familiar attracted the largest amount of attention to the advertised brand, which improved subsequent brand memory. In addition, original and familiar ads were found to promote brand memory directly. Implications of these findings for communication and media planning strategy are discussed.