Advertising to the masses: the effects of crowding on the attention to place-based advertising

ABSTRACT

Advertising situated in environments where people congregate or pass through on their way to somewhere else benefit from being placed in such high traffic areas. However, these strategically placed ads also suffer from conditions of human crowding that prevents them from being noticed and processed. We undertake a study of place-based advertising in a shopping mall using facial recognition software to determine the effect of human density on the attention directed to advertising. We find that as human density increases, attention to advertising decreases, but only to a point where it begins to increase again. Our research also finds that human density plays a moderating role on the motivation to process advertising.

KEYWORDS:

• attention
• facial recognition
• human density
• message processing
• out-of-home advertising
• place-based advertising

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank South Korean digital advertising agency Dovetorabbit for their collaboration with data collection and Don Bacon for his constructive comments on the methods section.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.