How brand mentions in television advertising affect consumer attention, recall and evaluation

Abstract

One of the critical success factors of any television commercial lies in the extent to which consumers can correctly link it to the advertising brand. While several studies have underlined the importance of (frequently) mentioning the brand's name to foster such brand linkage, they generally have not accounted for consumers' intrinsic tendency to avoid advertising. Because many consumers divert their attention from a commercial before its end is reached, not every brand mention is going to be observed by everyone, which may severely hamper their impact. In fact, prior academic work has shown that these brand mentions themselves may form an (additional) trigger to skip a commercial prematurely. The current paper brings both literature streams together and models the impact of different types of within-ad brand mentions on 1) consumers' second-by-second decision to skip a commercial or keep watching, and 2) their subsequent ability to recall the brand — conditional on what elements of the commercial they could and could not observe. In addition, as determining the optimal number of brand mentions implies that the right balance needs to be struck between their positive (recall) and negative (loss-of-audience) effects, further input for this decision is provided by also analysing how consumers' opinions and attitudes towards a commercial are affected by in-ad branding. The findings demonstrate that even with just a few second-long brand mentions within a commercial, a better performance in terms of viewer attention and brand recall is achieved compared to having a brand watermark for the commercial's entire duration. It was also concluded that a high number of (aural) brand mentions is better suited to more rational, ‘sales activation’ commercials, while a low number of (visual) brand mentions is preferred for more emotional, ‘brand-building’ commercials.