Exploring the Effect of Incorporating Danmaku into Advertising

Abstract

This study explored the effect of incorporating danmaku, a website feature which allows viewers’ comments to scroll on top of videos that are streaming online, into advertising. Through a 2 (danmaku: absence versus presence) × 2 (ad type: nonhumor versus humor) × 2 (comment type: not cueing humor versus cueing humor) online experiment, we found a conditional effect of implementing the danmaku format on boosting advertising effectiveness. Specifically, when the ad content and comment content were incongruent—such that comments not cueing humor were used for humor ads, or comments cueing humor were used for nonhumor ads—danmaku ads fostered more favorable attitudes toward the ad, the brand, and the advertised product via heightened social presence. In light of the conditional effects, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of the findings and directions for future research.

Keywords:

• Danmaku
• interactivity
• social presence
• intrusiveness

Notes

Notes

1 A full list of danmaku comments in the stimuli was not included in this article for parsimony. They are available upon request from the corresponding author.

2 In addition to the three variables described in this section, the study has a fourth independent variable—commentability—operationalized as whether or not to allow participants to enter their own comments while watching the ad. In particular, if they were instructed to enter a danmaku comment, they could see their own comment instantly scrolling and overlaying the video once submitted. For those who could not comment, the comment submission box was not displayed. However, our data suggest that being able to enter comments did not yield significantly higher perceived interactivity (M = 4.39, SE = .09) than not being able to do so (M = 4.27, SE = .09), t (516) = .17, p = .435, one-tailed. This finding possibly indicates unsuccessful experimental manipulation, and technical problems prevented us from tracking whether those who had been assigned to enter comments actually did so. Therefore, we were not able to know to what extent making comments with danmaku was critical to foster positive consumer attitudes. Hence, we decided not to include the variable commentability and focused on the other three variables throughout the article. That said, future research could further examine the role of action in the danmaku system in cultivating desirable attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the brands and products.

3 We prepared two ads for the humor-ad condition and the nonhumor-ad condition to increase the study external validity. Therefore, we anticipated that between Smirnoff and Chinet, and between Heineken and GameStop, elicited perceived humor would not significantly differ. To check this, we performed a univariate analysis of variance, which showed that Smirnoff (M = 4.16, SE = .15) and Chinet (M = 4.27, SE = .15) did not significantly differ (p = .619), and Heineken (M = 5.46, SE = .15) and GameStop (M = 5.45, SE = .15) did not significantly differ (p = .952) on perceived humor. We then consider the two ads within each condition equivalent in their ability to induce humor or not, thus combining Smirnoff with Chinet, and Heineken with GameStop, should not present confounding effects across different ads.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lewen Wei

Lewen Wei (MA, Pennsylvania State University) is a doctoral student, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communication, Pennsylvania State University.

Tongxin Sun

Tongxin Sun (MA, Pennsylvania State University) is a graduate, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communication, Pennsylvania State University.

Bingjie Liu

Bingjie Liu (MA, Chinese University, Hong Kong) is a doctoral student, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communication, Pennsylvania State University.