Redundancy Gain of Incidental Advertising Exposure on the Internet
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REDUNDANCY GAIN OF INCIDENTAL ADVERTISING EXPOSURE ON THE INTERNET A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY SANGRUO HUANG IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY JOHN EIGHMEY JULY 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Sangruo Huang Abstract “Redundant ad exposure”, defined as simultaneous exposures to multiple exemplars of an ad, is an emerging ad exposure strategy on the Internet and has been employed increasingly by online news sites. The effects of such strategy, however, have never been examined. The current study took the initiative to examine the effects of redundant ad exposure strategy on brand memory and brand preference relative to two other commonly used online ad exposure strategies: single exposure and repeated exposure, when ad exposure was incidental. Additionally, the factor of ad size variation was included to test whether size variation interacted with ad exposure effects. In two experiments, a redundancy gain effect was revealed for exactly identical ads, but not for size- variation ads. Specifically, redundant exposures to exactly identical ads led to (a) greater brand memory and brand preference, as well as (b) faster response to choosing a preferred target brand, than single exposure. Redundant exposures to exactly identical ads were also (c) more effective than repeated exposures in many aspects. These findings provide implications and suggestions for media planners to rethink conventional and modern planning strategies with regard to incidental ad exposure on the Internet. i Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... v Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................. 7 Literature Review................................................................................................................ 7 Effects of Redundant Ad Exposures and Theoretical Explanations ............................... 7 Definition of Redundant Exposure .............................................................................. 7 Redundancy Effects ..................................................................................................... 8 The Perceptual Fluency/Misattribution Model ......................................................... 13 The Hedonic Fluency Model ..................................................................................... 14 Effects of Repeated Ad Exposures ............................................................................... 15 Comparison of Redundant and Repeated Ad Exposure Effects .................................... 19 Ad Size Variation on the Internet ................................................................................. 20 Overall Methodological Approach................................................................................ 21 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................... 23 Experiment 1 ..................................................................................................................... 23 Method .......................................................................................................................... 23 Experimental Design ................................................................................................. 23 Participants ............................................................................................................... 23 Stimuli ....................................................................................................................... 24 Manipulation ............................................................................................................. 25 Procedure .................................................................................................................. 27 Dependent Measure .................................................................................................. 28 ii Results ........................................................................................................................... 29 Hypothesis Testing .................................................................................................... 30 Summary ................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................... 38 Experiment 2 ..................................................................................................................... 38 Method .......................................................................................................................... 38 Experimental Design, Stimuli, Manipulation, and Procedure .................................. 38 Participants ............................................................................................................... 38 Dependent Measures ................................................................................................. 38 Results ........................................................................................................................... 39 Hypothesis Testing .................................................................................................... 40 Summary ................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................... 50 General Discussion ........................................................................................................... 50 Conclusions and Discussion ......................................................................................... 50 Managerial Implications ............................................................................................... 55 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research ........................................................ 56 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 59 Appendix A: Real Examples of Redundant Ads ............................................................... 86 Appendix B: Experimental Stimuli ................................................................................... 92 Appendix C: List of Target Brands ................................................................................... 97 Appendix D: List of Distractor Brands ............................................................................. 99 Appendix E: Experiment Instructions ............................................................................. 101 Appendix F: Dependent Measure for Experiment 1 ....................................................... 105 Appendix G: Dependent Measure for Experiment 2 ...................................................... 111 iii List of Tables Table 1. Spacing Variation for Repeated Ad Exposures .................................................. 26 Table 2. Spacing Effects on Brand Memory for Repeated Exposures .............................. 31 Table 3. Spacing Effects on Brand Preference for Repeated Exposures .......................... 42 Table 4. Summary of Hypotheses Testing and Research Question Results ..................... 51 iv List of Figures Figure 1. Redundant vs. Single Exposure Effects on Brand Memory .............................. 33 Figure 2. Redundant vs. Repeated Exposure Effects on Brand Memory .......................... 35 Figure 3. Redundant vs. Single Exposure Effects on Brand Preference ........................... 44 Figure 4. Redundant vs. Single Exposure Effects on Brand Preference Response Time . 46 Figure 5. Redundant vs. Repeated Exposure Effects on Brand Preference ...................... 47 v Chapter 1 Introduction Today the Internet is at the core of marketing communication between advertisers and consumers. In the past 10 years, Internet ad spending in the U.S. has grown at a compound annual rate of 20.1% and rapidly increased to $42.78 billion in 2013, unprecedentedly surpassing the ad spending of any other ad-supported media including television, newspaper, radio, magazine, out-of-home, video game, and cinema respectively (IAB 2014). Among many different forms of advertising on the Internet, display advertising, which is defined as a form of advertising where “advertiser pays an online company for space on one or more of the online company’s pages to display a static or linked banner or logo” (IAB 2014, p. 23), has stabilized its share of 19% of total Internet ad spending since 2004 and remained the second leading ad format on the Internet, following search advertising