Exploring the effects of online advertising on reader's perceptions of online news

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 81, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 733-749

  Yang, Hyeseung ^a   Oliver, Mary Beth ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADVERTISING; PERCEPTION;

EID: 16344394632     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900408100402     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (NY: Penguin, 1986).
2. Frank Biocca, Prabu David, Adrienne Dion, Sabrina Goodson, Michele Lashley, and Hong-Im Tan, "The Effect of Commercials on Memory and Perceived Importance of Television News," Mass Comm Review 19 (1992): 14-20.
3. See, for example, V. Carter Broach, Jr., Thomas J. Page, Jr., and R. Dale Wilson, "Television Programming and Its Influence on Viewers' Perceptions of Commercials: The Role of Program Arousal and Pleasantness," Journal of Advertising 24 (winter 1989): 45-54;
4. Paul M. Herr, "Priming Price: Prior Knowledge and Context Effects," Journal of Consumer Research 16 (June 1989): 67-75;
5. E. Tory Higgins and Gillian A. King, "Accessibility of Social Constructs: Information Processing Consequences of Individual and Contextual Variability," in Personality, Cognition, and Social Interaction, ed. Nancy Cantor and John F. Kihlstrom (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981), 69-122;
6. Claire E. Norris and Andrew M. Colman, "Context Effects on Memory for Television Advertisements," Social Behavior and Personality 21 (1993): 279-96;
7. Claire E. Norris and Andrew M. Colman, "Effects of Entertainment and Enjoyment of Television Programs on Perception and Memory of Advertisements," Social Behavior and Personality 22 (1994): 365-76;
8. Christopher P. Puto, "The Framing of Buying Decisions," Journal of Consumer Research 14 (December 1987): 301-316;
9. Gerald E. Smith, "Framing in Advertising and the Moderating Impact of Consumer Education," Journal of Advertising Research 36 (September/October 1996): 49-64;
10. and Arch G. Woodside and Alan E. Singer, "Social Interaction Effects in the Framing of Buying Decisions," Psychology & Marketing 11 (January/February 1994): 27-35.
11. Yih Hwai Lee and Charlotte Mason, "Responses to Information Incongruency in Advertising: The Role of Expectancy, Relevancy and Humor," Journal of Consumer Research 26 (September 1999): 156-69;
12. Gabriele S. Haberland and Peter A. Dacin, "The Development of a Measure to Assess Viewers' Judgments of the Creativity of an Advertisement," in Advances in Consumer Research 19, ed. J. F. Sherry Jr. and B. Sternthal (Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 1992): 817-825.
13. David W. Stewart and Scott Ward, "Media Effects on Advertising," in Media Effects, ed. Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), 315-63.
14. For examples of studies exploring the effects of ads on viewers' perceptions or attitudes about media content, see Stephen D. Perry, "Commercial Humor Enhancement of Program Enjoyment: Gender and Program Appeal as Mitigating Factors," Mass Communication & Society 4 (winter 2001): 103-116;
15. Stephen D. Perry, Stefan A. Jenzowsky, Joe Bob Hester, Cynthia M. King, and Huiuk Yi, "The Influence of Commercial Humor on Program Enjoyment and Evaluation," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (summer 1997): 388-99.
16. Arjun Chaudhuri and Ross Buck, "Affect, Reason, and Persuasion: Advertising Strategies That Predict Affective and Analytic-Cognitive Responses," Human Communication Research 21 (March 1995): 422-41.
17. Barrie Gunter, Poor Reception: Misunderstanding and Forgetting Broadcast News (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987).
18. Biocca et al., "The Effect of Commercials."
19. Jan Panero Benway and David M. Lane, "Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss Obvious Links," Internetworking, 5 December 1998, (26 January 2002). .
20. Xavier Drèze and Francois-Xavier Hussherr, "Internet Advertising: Is Anybody Watching?" .
21. Micael Dahlen, Ylva Ekborn, and Natalia Morner, "To Click or Not to Click: An Empirical Study of Response to Banner Ads for High and Low Involvement Products," Consumption, Markets and Culture 4 (November 2000): 1-20.
22. It should be noted that it is impossible to analyze the effects of both Seriousness of Ad and Ad Format on news perceptions because the control condition contained no ads, whereas it is possible to analyze the effects of both variables on ad perceptions because the control condition that contained no ads is not included during the analysis. Consequently, the factor of Ad Format will not be included in news perception analysis, whereas it will be included in ad perception analysis as a factor along with other factors including Seriousness of Ad.
23. The JavaScript employed for the random assignment was the "Math.random()" method. Assignment to experimental conditions was fairly evenly distributed using the method. For example, among 260 participants, 123 (47.3%) were assigned to the hard news condition, whereas 137 (52.7%) were assigned to the soft news condition. In addition, 82 (31.5%) were assigned to the silly ad condition, 83 (31.9%) were assigned to the serious ad condition, and 95 (36.5%) were assigned to the no ad condition.
24. Although Biocca et al. ("The Effect of Commercials") were interested in the effects of "humorous" commercials on news perceptions, the current study employed the term "silly" rather than "humorous" to describe the online ads. Considering the general nature of online advertising, whose main strategy is to grab users' attention using image elements rather than to provide story plots, the adjective of "silly" rather than " humorous" appears appropriate for online ads.
25. The manipulation of "Seriousness of Ad" (silly versus serious) conceptually includes not only what ad appeal techniques are used but also what brands are advertised. Although advertised brands are not identical across silly and serious conditions, those different brands should not be understood as a confounding variable because this study is not interested in the separate effects of ad appeal techniques or brands advertised per se. In other words, there is no theoretical need for this study to specify two different variables (i.e., ad appeal techniques and brands advertised) considering the main purpose of the current study.
26. It is impossible to articulate the exact size of the ads in absolute dimensions (e.g., inches) because a pixel is a purely relative measurement. That is, the size of the ads (300 × 250 pixels) may be seen in a variety of sizes in inches according to monitor resolution settings. In a typical resolution of 1,024 × 768 pixels on a 17-inch monitor, the size corresponds to approximately 3.5 × 3 inches.
27. S. Shyam Sundar, "Exploring Receivers' Criteria for Perception of Print and Online News," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 76 (summer 1999): 373-86.
28. It is impossible to analyze both Ad Format and Seriousness of Ad in the same analysis given that the control condition contained no ads. Given that the purpose of this research was to extend prior studies that have examined the valence of ads (rather than their format), the present study opted to focus attention on Seriousness of Ad (silly or serious) rather than the Ad Format (banner or pop-up). However, it is possible to explore the effects of Ad Format (banner or pop-up), instead of Seriousness of Ad (silly or serious), using a 2 (Story Type) × 3 (Ad Format) × 2 (Internet Use) MANOVA. As with the previous analysis focusing on Seriousness of Ad, this alternative analysis also revealed a significant multivariate Story Type × Ad Format × Internet Use interaction, Wilks' A = .93, F(6, 490) = 2.97, p < .01. An examination of the univariate results revealed significant interactions for both ratings of news value and credibility: news value: F(2, 247) = 7.51, p <.001; credibility: F(2, 247) = 3.84, < .05. As in the previous analysis, for ratings of news value, ad inclusion had no effect on ratings of the soft news stories. In contrast, for the hard news stories, the inclusion of advertising (and particularly banner advertising) resulted in lower news value ratings, but only among the light Internet users (No Ads: M = 5.60, SE =.18; Banner: M = 4.80, SE =.23; Pop-up: M = 4.96, SE = .18). For heavy internet users, the inclusion of advertising had no appreciable effect on ratings of the hard news stories. Similar patterns were observed for ratings of credibility among light Internet users in the hard news condition (No Ads: M = 5.14, SE =.18; Banner: M = 4.53, SE = .24; Pop-up: M = 4.83, SE = .18).
29. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death; Biocca et al., "The Effect of Commercials."
30. Biocca et al., "The Effect of Commercials."
31. Barrie Gunter, News and the Net (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), 50-51.
32. See, for example, Robert R. Harmon and Kenneth A. Coney, "The Persuasive Effects of Source Credibility in Buy and Lease Situations," Journal of Marketing Research 19 (May 1982): 255-60;
33. Brian Sternthal, Ruby Dholakia, and Clark Leavitt, "The Persuasive Effect of Source Credibility: A Test of Cognitive Response Analysis," Journal of Consumer Research 4 (March 1978): 252-60;
34. and Brian Sternthal, Lynn W. Philips, and Ruby Dholakia, "The Persuasive Effect of Source Credibility: A Statistical Analysis," Public Opinion Quarterly 42 (fall 1978): 285-314.