An exploratory study of the effectiveness of interactive advertisements on the Internet

Abstract

With the increasing popularity of electronic commerce on the Internet, interactive advertising has become one of the hottest topics among advertising and marketing professionals. The recent hype about the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), and the National Information Infrastructure (NII) has increased the commercial potential of interactive advertising. In spite of this somewhat overrated optimism about interactive advertising, there lacks an empirical study on the effectiveness of interactive advertisements, as compared to advertisements that have appeared in traditional non-interactive media. The study used an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of interactive advertisements. One hundred and eight computer users from Taiwan, China and the USA watched both interactive and non-interactive advertisements featuring either a battery or a floppy disk. Three advertising effectiveness measures were tested: the attitude towards an advertisement (Aad), the attitude towards an advertised brand (Ab) and the time of exposure to each advertisement. The results indicate that the interactivity of an advertisement does not create a favourable attitude towards the advertisements and the advertised products. The subjects spent less time in an interactive advertisement than its non- interactive version. The insignificant differences between interactive and non-interactive advertising can be the result of several reasons. First, executional characteristics (such as interactivity) only play a limited role in enhancing advertising effectiveness. Second, traditional effectiveness measures failed to show the effects of interactivity. Third, factors such as the subjects' lack of interest in cybershopping, the characteristics of virtual stores and the experimental setting may also lead to these findings.