World Wide Web advertising: Exploring a new advertising environment

Carolynn Rae Tomory Johnson, Purdue University

Abstract

The World Wide Web currently boasts millions of users in the United States alone and will likely continue to expand as a marketplace and as an advertising environment. Six experiments explored advertising on the Web, in particular memory for advertisements as they appear in everyday use on the Web. Normative data, including brand name familiarity, was gathered in Experiment 1. The remaining experiments demonstrated that the recall of brand names promoted by banner advertisements is quite low in comparison to recall of the webpages that contained these advertisements. Experiment 2 demonstrated that recall of familiar brand names was superior to that of less familiar brand names. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the use of dynamic advertisements can result in greater brand name recall than does that of static advertisements, though only for familiar brand names. Experiment 4 demonstrated that repetition of a web-page can improve recall of the web-page but not of a brand name promoted by an advertisement within that web-page. However, Experiments 5 and 6 demonstrated that repetition of an advertisement within multiple webpages can improve recall of familiar brand names and recognition of unfamiliar brand names. Finally, data regarding Web usage confirmed reports that Web usage among males tends to exceed that among females.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Neath, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Cognitive therapy|Marketing

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