The Psychology of Banner Ads

The researchers have jump to the conclusion that by exposing yourself to a product, time and again via banner ads envelope positive feeling towards that product. The good news for consumers is that a critical revaluation of the product can make these positive feelings disappear.

To test, they asked students to read a multi-page essay under the impression that they would be fielding the questions on the essay's content. Instead, the students were ultimately quizzed about a fictitious brand of camera, Pretec, which had appeared in the banner ads on the pages that contained the essay. Different pools of students are exposed to Pretec ads zero, five, or 20 times.

When asked about their negative vibes towards the brand, the number of exposures made absolutely no difference. In contrast, those students asked about their positive feelings towards the brand see those feelings increased based on the number of exposures.

There are apparently two models striving to explain this phenomenon. The first proposes that people will more willingly assign positive properties and can retain things in their memory more readily. The second suggests that the processing of even minimal exposures can create an actual positive evaluation. That positive affect then influences future evaluations.

To conclude which of these may be at play, the authors took another pool of students and asked them to make a similar evaluation but in attempt to do so without considering the familiarity of Pretec, the positive effect can be vanished, suggesting that the first model was correct.

Hence, psychologists have a better grip on their theories, and advertisers have barely few things to consider. Banner ads may provide a valuable function in fostering familiarity and the familiarity-based advertising may work best for impulse buys, where more detailed evaluations aren't likely to occur.

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