How Does Media Context Affect Ad Memory?

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Summary

Nearly 50 years’ worth of research on the influence of media context on advertising effectiveness has lacked clarity and consistency, but this meta-analysis of quantitative studies across media types pieces together part of the puzzle by finding relationships between media context and ad memory. The authoring academics, based in the U.S. and in Australia, sought “to identify more comprehensively which media-context factors are associated either positively, neutrally, or negatively with advertising memory.” Among the findings:

Increased consumer media involvement, media-advertising-context congruency, and higher program liking are media-context factors that more likely will improve advertising memory.
Programs with violent, sexual, and suspenseful content and ones that are humorous and induce higher consumer arousal more likely will inhibit advertising memory.
Because advertising effectiveness is enhanced if media-context factors positively influence media users’ advertising memory beyond exposure indicators (e.g., ratings and reach), influencing factors should be given serious consideration in media decision making.

Eun Sook Kwon (exkgpt@rit.edu) is an assistant professor of advertising in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on consumer engagement in social media, advertising and media engagement, and replication practices.

Karen Whitehill King (kwking@uga.edu) is Jim Kennedy Professor of New Media and a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Advertising at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on advertising-industry issues and health communications

Greg Nyilasy (gnyilasy@unimelb.edu.au) is director of the PhD program in marketing and entrepreneurship and fellow of the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, both at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research interests are innovation/entrepreneurship, sustainability and technocognition (how new technologies such as AI, VR/AR, social media influence consumer information processing and behavior).

Leonard N. Reid (lnreid@uga.edu) is professor emeritus of advertising at the University of Georgia and affiliate professor of mass communication at Virginia Commonwealth University. His most recent research has focused on replication practices, food advertising effects, pharmaceutical advertising, and media engagement.