Introduction
In line with the significant year-on-year increase of online advertising, intrusive advertising practices employed by marketers, such as banner ads and pop-up ads, continue to grow. These approaches are often forced upon consumers and may be obstructive (covering a part of the screen) and distracting to ensure noticeability.
Intrusive advertising results in negative behavioural outcomes like advertising avoidance and decreased purchase intention. These outcomes are part of psychological reactance within an online marketing context where annoyance and frustration occur because of the intrusive ads. Moreover, ad viewers may experience a lower sense of agency – a sense of people having control over their experiences and how they interact with the external world, which is key to consumer satisfaction in technology use as they can react negatively when control is lost. For example, when we view entertainment content, we have a sense of agency in that we have chosen that content and can control our consumption experiences. Hence, when an ad is forced on us, we can feel a lack of control and suffer from a reduced sense of agency as well as psychological reactance.
Despite brands’ common use of skip, countdown, and choice in online advertising, limited research has examined the mitigating effects of these functions on psychological reactance and reduced sense of agency caused by intrusive advertising. Importantly, research is yet to explore the interactive effects of when these three mechanisms are used in conjunction (e.g., countdown to the appearance of a skip button vs. countdown to the end of an advertisement) although such combinations are now in widespread use by advertisers.
Therefore, this study aims to identify the effect of utilising skip, countdown, choice mechanisms, and combinations of these three, to provide a reduction in psychological reactance and an increase in sense of agency on brand outcomes such as brand preference and
memory for the advertised brand. These are important considering the large amount of money brands spend on online advertising as well as the vast numbers of consumers exposed to this type of advertising. Five hypotheses were developed for the study.
Method and sample
There were three main experiments. All participants were US citizens and recruited through Amazon MTurk.
· In Experiment 1A, 134 participants watched a TED Talk video interspersed with 12 ads, from which the impacts of skip functionality and ad type on subsequent memory for advertised brands were examined.
· In Experiment 1B, 112 participants were exposed to either banner or pop-up ads, with skip functionality manipulated randomly. Subsequent preference for the advertised brand was measured.
· Experiment 2A included 121 participants to study the interaction between skip function and countdown mechanism on brand memory. The countdown either counted down to the appearance of a skip button or to the end of the ad. The countdown was from 10 to 1 or from 5 to 1, followed by the skip button.
· Experiment 2B, involving 135 participants, investigated the interplay between skip function and a countdown mechanism on preference for the advertised brand. The skip condition involved a countdown either to the appearance of a skip button or to the end of the ad. Meanwhile, participants could not skip in the no-skip condition.
· Experiment 3, with 131 participants, utilised the same video and approaches as in previous experiments to study whether giving consumers a choice over when to view ads influences brand outcomes. Intrusiveness, psychological reactance, sense of agency, memory, and preference for the brand were measured.
Key findings
1. Allowing viewers to skip ads helps improve their preference for the advertised brands regardless of ad types (banner or pop-up). However, there is a trade-off as the skip option leads to lower memory of the advertised brands compared to when there is no skip function available (which causes lower preference of the advertised brands). This is possibly due to consumers focusing on the skip button rather than the ad content.
2. Implementing a countdown either with or without a skip button can result in higher preference and memory for the advertised brands. Notably, the countdown to the end is effective on its own but is not as beneficial when combined with the skip function.
3. Offering consumers a choice when to view ads also enhance preference and memory for the advertised brands. However, this choice mechanism does not provide extra benefits compared to those provided by the countdown to the end of the ad.
Recommendations
1. Giving control (sense of agency) back to consumers benefits brand outcomes but some approaches (countdowns) can be more effective than others. Hence, a more optimal approach is to provide a countdown without any skip functionality, even though the countdown itself serves no real time reduction benefit to consumers.
2. Advertisers should provide a countdown button informing the consumer how long they have until the end of the advertisement in all online advertising. This way, a sense of agency is provided to consumers by making the time of the “intrusion” known to them. Popular online platforms like Vimeo and Spotify adopt this approach in their freemium version where they have advertisements.
3. Although countdowns appear to be more frequent on pop-up ads, they have been indicated to be also suitable for banner ads and hence should be utilised by marketers. Importantly, marketers should not offer countdowns in conjunction with skip functions as commonly done because it can lower brand memory and preference.
4. Offering consumers a choice about when they see online ads can enhance brand memory and preference. With different subscription models available for online platforms, online providers can work with advertisers to ensure a suitable model which satisfies the most consumers and benefits all parties. When consumers sign up to an online platform, those consumers who do not want the premium version without ads can be asked when they want to see advertisements. This way, consumers gain a sense of agency, online platforms gain advertising fees, and advertisers achieve favourable brand outcomes (memory and preference).
Lead Researcher
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.