AAA ELM1

Audience Processing of Advertising on the WWW:Applying ELM to the Internet: 

Audience Processing of Advertising on the WWW: Applying ELM to the Internet Chang-Hoan Cho Department of Advertising College of Communication The University of Texas at Austin

Introduction: 

Introduction How consumers process advertising messages has been important topic in advertising However with the advent of the new interactive media (i.e, the Internet), the applicability of the existing advertising theories to the Internet is questionable. Why? Different characteristics of the Internet (two-way interactive) from those of other traditional media (one-way exposure)

Research Question: 

Research Question Hierarchy-of-effects models the stream of research that studies advertising effectiveness through consumer advertising processing ELM considered to be the most recent and comprehensive model of consumers’ advertising processing This paper modifies the traditional ELM for advertising processing in the Internet

Modified ELM : 

Modified ELM 1. Vehicle Exposure vehicle exposure is different from advertising exposure to differentiate ad exposure from vehicle exposure 2. Opportunity to Process (involuntary exposure to banner ads) mediating variables: 1) downloading time 2) position of banner ads

Modified ELM: 

Modified ELM 3. Voluntary Exposure (clicking banner ads) Motivation to Process (level of personal and product involvement) works as the most important determining factor of clicking banner ads 1) in high involvement situations, people have high motivation to process advertising messages: high personal relevance and high product involvement ---> high need for cognition ---> high demand of information ---> high probability to click banner ads This can be called central route to voluntary exposure H1: People in high involvement situations are more likely to click banner ads in order to request more information than those in low involvement situations.

Modified ELM: 

Modified ELM 2) in low involvement situations, people have low motivations to process advertising messages low personal relevance and low product involvement ---> low need for cognition ---> focus on favorability of peripheral cues ---> click banners H2a: In low involvement situations, people are more likely to click a banner ad when it has larger size than average banner ads. H2b: In low involvement situations, people are more likely to click a banner ad when it has dynamic animation than when it has no dynamic animation. H2c and H2d: In high-involvement situations, the size of banner ads and dynamic animation make no difference in clicking of banner ads

Modified ELM: 

Modified ELM Other Mediating Variables affecting voluntary exposure (clicking banners) 1) Relevancy between product categories of banner ads and contents of the vehicle H3: The banner ad with higher relevance between its product category and the contents of the site where the ad is placed will generate more clicking of the banner. 2) Attitude toward the vehicle H4: Those who have more favorable attitude toward a vehicle (home Web site) are more likely to click the banner ads on that site only when the product categories of the banner ads are relevant to the contents of the Web site.

Modified ELM: 

Modified ELM Other Mediating Variables affecting voluntary exposure (clicking banners) 3) Overall Attitude toward Web Ad H5a: Those who have more favorable attitude toward Web advertising overall have more favorable attitude toward banner ads. H5b: Those who have more favorable attitude toward Web advertising overall are more likely to click banner ads.

Modified ELM: 

Modified ELM 4. Voluntary/Active Cognitive Processing of Detailed Ad Content high involvement people engage in active cognitive processing or message-related cognitive thinking. as is true in ELM, two factors are important--1)initial attitude and 2) argument quality of advertising messages low involvement less likely to engage in active cognitive processing. focus on peripheral cues present in target ads

Modified ELM: 

Modified ELM 5. Central vs. Peripheral Attitude Change 1) high involvement: active cognitive processing people will have more enduring positive or negative attitude change. people will more likely to demonstrate behaviors reflecting their attitude change (e.g., purchase the advertised product if they have positive attitude change). 2) low involvement: peripheral processing people will experience temporary attitude shift if the peripheral cues in target ads are favorable this peripheral attitude shift is less likely to endure and to predict reflective behavior than attitude change through high elaboration The diagram of Modified ELM

Methodology: 

Methodology Intention to click banner ads instead of actual click-throughs why? The difficulty of getting the actual click-through data A total of 203 students, divided into two experimental groups, participated Between-group subject design, where each subject was exposed to only one of two experimental treatments. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions A total of 6 banner ads, two different versions of three products Sample Ads

Conclusion: 

Conclusion Based on the Modified ELM, this study generated 7 hypotheses, and all hypotheses were empirically supported. This study is pioneering in the sense that it is the first formal study on information processing of advertising on the WWW Weakness student samples intention to click vs. actual click-throughs