The World Wide Web: Exploring a New Advertising Environment

Abstract

The World Wide Web currently boasts millions of users in the United States alone and is likely to continue to expand both as a marketplace and as an advertising environment. Three experiments explored advertising in the Web environment, in particular memory for ads as they appear in everyday use across the Web. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of advertising repetition on the retention of familiar and less familiar brand names, respectively. Experiment 1 demonstrated that repetition of a banner ad within multiple web pages can improve recall of familiar brand names, and Experiment 2 demonstrated that repetition can improve recognition of less familiar brand names. Experiment 3 directly compared the retention of familiar and less familiar brand names that were promoted by static and dynamic ads and demonstrated that the use of dynamic advertising can increase brand name recall, though only for familiar brand names. This study also demonstrated that, in the Web environment, much as in other advertising environments, familiar brand names possess a mnemonic advantage not possessed by less familiar brand names. Finally, data regarding Web usage gathered from all experiments confirm reports that Web usage among males tends to exceed that among females.