Programme content is king: how spaced product presentation influences advert reminding and advert memory

Abstract

The rise of digital streaming services and online advertising has put strain on the linear TV advertising model; yet, TV advertising has maintained its crown as the best medium for long-term brand building activities. The present thesis supports the linear advertising offering by evidencing ways to improve advert memory via proximal placement to related programme products. The reminding theory of learning was applied to understand how non-branded category related programme products can increase advert memory. Chapter Two demonstrated memory effects relating to product repetition were contingent upon the advert retrieval activity during programme viewing, with the advert detail recalled in-programme determining the memory enhancement at test. In Chapter Three, the effects of product repetition information availability at test after more passive viewing conditions and a day long delay were assessed. It was found that those who could recollect the repetition had better memory for the advert product, while those who remembered repetitions demonstrated improvements to product and brand memory. Chapter Four used a full episode of a programme and interspersed unfamiliar US adverts, some of which created product repetition; when adverts did create repetition, they were better recalled than those without an associated programme product. The thesis’ paradigm also offered a method for evidencing the mechanisms behind a guerrilla marketing phenomenon; ambush marketing. In Chapter Five, participants’ ability to determine programme brands after viewing repeated product adverts was assessed, finding that when evaluating brand information using heuristic evidence, brand misattributions were more likely. However, when assessing the same information using recollective details, this misattribution effect was removed; meaning brand suggestion can be overcome via cognitive effort, which has implications for how to counter ambushing. Taken together, the investigations demonstrate the utility, and at times danger, of the programme to advertisers in designing, presenting, and scheduling advertising.