Interactivity and Persuasion

ABSTRACT

The recent arrival of interactive messaging/marketing units (IMUs) begs the question: Does interacting with an advertisement enhance its persuasive appeal? How does interactivity compare with other structural features of online ads such as animation and ad shape? A 3 (Interactivity: Low, Medium, High) × 2 (Animation: Animated, Static) × 2 (Ad Shape: Banner, Square) fully-crossed factorial within-participants experiment was conducted to explore these questions. All participants (N = 48) were exposed to 12 news-article Web pages, with one ad in each of them. Results show not only that the level of interactivity is positively associated with ad and product attitudes, but also that it interacts with animation and ad shape in complex ways to influence the persuasion process.

APPENDIX

Example of a High-Interactive Square Ad: Edmunds.com

First Layer (This is the main layer of the IMU, which the user will see without clicking on the ad)

Second Layer (Upon clicking on the second of the four tabs, the screen refreshes to produce four sub-tabs under the “Find the Right Car” tab)

Third Layer (Upon clicking “Safety” sub-tab under the “Find the Right Car” tab, the screen refreshes to display safety-related information)

Additional information

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

S. Shyam Sundar (Ph.D., Stanford University), is associate professor and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at the College of Communications in The Pennsylvania State University (http://www.psu.edu/dept/medialab). His research focuses on psychological aspects of technological elements in new media. His recent work investigates the effects of interactivity, navigability, multi-modality, and source attribution (agency) on user responses to Web-based mass communication. Email: [email protected]

Jinhee Kim (MA, University of Alabama), is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Communications in The Pennsylvania State University.