Measurement Of Advertising Effectiveness Across Different Media Media Essay

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to determine advertising effectiveness of four media. These media include both traditional media like television, radio and print and a new medium like the internet.

Design/ Methodology/ Approach – An online questionnaire was floated asking the respondents to evaluate the four media on eight different parameters namely, informativeness, emotions, attitude, action, attention, entertainment, irritation and deceptiveness. The results were analysed by comparison of the means using the ‘One Way Anova’ and ‘Tukey b Test’, was applied to see the difference between the effectiveness of different media on the basis of the eight parameters listed above. This was followed by ‘Terpstra – Jonckheere Test’ to confirm our order of alternatives.

Findings – The study determined that different media have significant differences in their effectiveness when evaluated on the above mentioned eight parameters. According to the study, the consumer’s perceive television as the most effective advertising medium followed by print, internet and radio.

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Research Limitations/ implications – Only four media were considered for the study and it measured the effectiveness of different kinds of advertisements in general. Also, the respondents belonged to the same age group. Future research can be done with more media and can be extended for a particular product and for a particular brand.

Practical Implications – The study can be used to determine the most effective media for advertising a particular product. Also the advertising requirements differ with the life cycle of the product. The same can be evaluated with the help of this study.

Originality/ Value – There have been past studies to evaluate the advertising effectiveness of different media but none of them has been particular to Indian context.

Key Words – advertising effectiveness, comparison between different advertising media, traditional media compared to web

Paper Type – Survey based research paper

INTRODUCTION

Media, from long, has been used by advertisers to build brands; be it television, radio, print, internet or outdoor advertising. With increasing competition and the rat race between the various sellers, it has increasingly become important for the advertisers to differentiate themselves from others, and the efficient advertising mix has a very important role to play in the effectiveness of this differentiating behaviour.

Often marketers face themselves with the problem of deciding on how much to spend on advertising on the various types of media. This decision rests on the measure of effectiveness of each of these forms, which is often a tough task. For the same product, the effect of a particular media may be far different from the others. Also, the effects of these media may vary largely across the various product categories as well. Hence to reach to the optimum advertising mix it’s necessary for the marketers to evaluate the perceived value of each of these media on its consumers.

How do viewers perceive the TV over other types of media? Is the modern media like internet more effective compared to the traditional media like TV and print? To answer these questions, the study focuses on the view, opinions and perceptions of people who are exposed to the various media. Here, in this paper, we intend to measure the perceived value of the various forms of media in the mind of consumers, and quantify this to reach to an ‘advertising value’ for each of the media across a particular product category. This perception of viewers has a large role to play on the advertiser’s selection of various media for advertising, and allocation of the advertising budget to these media.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

Advertising on the four media which are taken into consideration for the purpose of this study namely, television, radio, print and internet have their own advantages and disadvantages. While television, radio and print are the traditional methods of advertising and have a long history behind them, internet has emerged as an advertising medium in the near past. Over the years, internet has emerged as a competitor to the traditional media and has created a niche for itself. It is however not clear from the previous studies that consumers who watch all four kinds of advertisements consider all of them equally effective or not. Also, there is a dearth of research when it comes to measuring the advertising effectiveness of the four media vis-a-vis each other in the Indian context. This study aims to fill this gap that exists.

ADVERTISING ON DIFFERENT MEDIA

Advertising on Television

Television advertising started in United States in the year 1941. Television advertising started in India in the eighties and from then there is no looking back for this medium of advertising. Television is a commonly used medium for advertising campaigns due to its popularity and the capability to reach audiences of all ages (Edell & Keller, 1989). According to the New York Times, television is to stay in India. It has seen a phenomenal growth in the past and will continue to grow. There are been a 20 percent increase in the number of homes with televisions. It has increased from 88 million in 2000 to 105 million in the year 2009. There has been a 21 percent increase in the advertising spending on Indian television from the year 1995 to 2005. Spending on television advertising reached $1.6 billion in the year 2005.

Television has several advantages over other medium. The reach of television is much wider than that of other advertising media like print and it does so in a shorter duration of time. Also, television has multiple communication appeal as it uses both hearing and vision.  By appealing to both senses a TV advertiser can use these to reinforce each other.

Television as an advertising medium has its own set of disadvantages. The cost of advertising is much higher for television as compared to other forms of media considered here. Also, if the advertisement is not intrusive enough it may fail to capture the attention of the audience. In addition to this the number of advertisements which fight for the coveted time slots on television may add to the clutter and may not help in reinforcing the belief of the customer.

Advertising on Radio

Advertising on radio started in the early 1920s, when the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. These days radio is no longer considered to be an attractive means of advertising. Radio, an old- fashioned medium existing in the shadow of high tech boom of internet advertising and cable TV, is not considered lucrative anymore (Joachim Jean C., 1999). Though radio ads have decreased in popularity but still it is widely used as an advertising medium because of the benefits it provides.

The key advantage of radio advertising is its cost effectiveness as compared to other media like television. The advantages of radio advertising are low production costs and selectivity in reaching segments of audiences homogeneous in demographics or lifestyles (McDonald, 1998; Roberts & Berger, 1989). Also, radio has a wider reach in terms of the number of audience covered vis a vis television or internet.

Radio advertisement has the disadvantage of being ephemeral, since the consumer can only hear the ad, it becomes very necessary to have an ad which is highly attention grabbing. Also, due to smaller coveted slots, cluttering of ads may happen. Apart from this, the decrease in the popularity of the medium has made radio advertising less sought after.

Print advertising is one of the oldest modes of advertising. With the advent of radio, television and internet, print advertising has lost its lustre. Due to the advantage that print medium has on the cost front, it is still the most sought after advertising medium for small, local businesses.

Print medium has a very wide reach and it proves to be very cost effective. The advertisement can reach different segments in a wide geographic region. The people can refer to the ads multiple times and therefore it has the desired permanence.

The biggest limitation of print is that the ad has to compete for the attention of the reader. In the limited space that the medium provides, the ads may just get lost in the clutter. In addition to this, more and more people are now switching to online versions of magazines and newspapers. So the traditional print medium is losing its charm

.Advertising on the Internet

Advertising on the internet started in the year 1994 when Wired magazine came up with its commercial web magazine which was the first of its kind. With this online magazine started the era of of advertising on the Internet. Since then, advertising on the Internet has increased rapidly, mainly due to an astronomical growth in Web traffic. But with this increase in the web traffic clutter over the internet has increased manifolds.

The internet has many advantages over the traditional forms of media, the most prominent of them being the cost. The cost incurred is a fraction of the cost which will be paid for a similar ad on television. Another advantage of Internet advertising is that it provides a medium to buy the product as well. No other media offers this flexibility.

As with other advertising media clutter is an issue, as competition for Web users becomes more intense. Also, the frequency of pop up ads can cause irritation in the consumer. Apart from this the rate of usage of internet is really an issue especially in developing countries like India and this makes internet advertising less popular.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS

‘Advertising Effectiveness’ as defined by Ducoffe is ‘a subjective evaluation of the relative worth or utility of advertising to consumers’. Ducoffe, in his study, suggested media mix has an important role to play in advertising effectiveness. In his research, the respondents were asked to rank different media in terms of their role in advertising. Consumers ranked television the top labelling it the most valuable source, followed by print media, direct mail and radio; web was placed at bottom.

As per previous studies, consumers consider newspapers to be most effective in informativeness, reliability and credibility whereas television and radio rate lower on these attributes.

Comparision of Traditional Media with Web

With internet emerging as an effective media of advertising, a synergy in advertising through various media forms can be achieved by integrating internet with other media to achieve company’s objectives. Leong et al [1998], in his study, suggested that though internet is different from other media, it can be used to complement other media.

Many researchers [Negroponte-1995] are of the view that TV viewing would become obsolete in certain time with computer activities replacing it in a large way. But at the same time, there are many that do not support the replacement view [Coffey and Stripp-1997]. They do agree with TV popularity decreasing to some extent but expect it to still remain a popular activity.

As per Kanso and Nelson [2004], various media can be integrated to serve the purpose, thereby enticing customers to the product/ brand. A similar study by Chang and Thorson [2004] show the combined effect of advertising on various media viz. traditional and web is far superior compared to repeated advertising on individual mediums.

As per the survey carried out till date, there does not seem any paper which provides a complete comprehensive comparative analysis of different forms of media.

Gap in extant literature

The study by Ducoffe presents the results of a survey focussing on the perceived value of web advertising vis-à-vis other media. To understand what makes advertising effective, Ducoffe identified the dimensions of advertising which include informativeness, irritation, deceptiveness and entertainment. But this study was limited to comparing traditional media and web advertising and also excluded parameters like degree of information dissemination and emotional effects.

Though Leong et al did provide few parameters like attention, emotions, precipitating action and attitude to find out the advertising value of a particular media, but the study was limited to comparing the internet advertising to traditional media.

Also, most of the researches carried out so far miss on the point that the respondents chosen should be exposed to these various media so that their responses reflect the true effectiveness of media. We intend to choose those exposed to all the various media forms as our respondent base.

This effectiveness varies across the various product categories, their phase in the product life cycle, the demographics of the target group, and hence cannot be generalized. Hence, we intend to carry this research so as to keep these extraneous variables constant and can later be easily replicated across all the categories.

THEORETICAL BASES DERIVATION OF FOR THE HYPOTHESIS

Figure 1: Application Model

The hypothesis has been derived separately for each of the eight parameters, discussed above, and is described below stating all bases for the derivation of each.

Informativeness

According to the information gathered about “informativeness” of the various media, internet ads are the most informative, followed by print, television and radio.[Leong, 1998] This fact seems to be correct as the information available about a product/service is very expansive on the internet, due to “links” provided that help the user gain unending information. This is closely followed by print ads that contain extensive information printed about the product, due to the availability of space. Television and radio provide lesser information, due to the expensive “per second” rates. Television is more informative than radio due to the visual aid available.

Hypothesis 1

The level of “informativeness” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with internet ads being the most informative, followed by print media, television and radio in this order.

Attention

This section shows how engaging and interactive the media is. Again, television and radio score high on this factor, due to their audio-visual and audio aid respectively. This is followed by print and internet. Print, due to its direct impact in a newspaper or a magazine ranks next in this regard followed by internet ads which might not be that engaging for the user.

Hypothesis 2

The level of “attention” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with television ads being the most attention seeking, radio, print media, and internet in this order.

Emotions

According to Nielson, the internet is a more rational medium, while the television is an emotional medium. Thus, television rates high on the emotional factor, followed by radio and print, with internet being the least emotional, due to least interactiveness of the medium and it being the most informative.

Hypothesis 3

The level of “emotions” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with television ads being the most emotional, followed by radio, print media and internet in this order.

Precipitating Action

Persuasion is an action that drives a user towards purchasing the product. Internet purchasing is the most popular and is significantly higher than telemarketing. Internet is followed by print in precipitating action. Print media seems to influence people towards buying a product due to the informative nature of the medium. Radio is the least persuasive in this regard as radio just provides a “recall” for the product.

Hypothesis 4

The level of “precipitating action” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with internet ads having the most precipitating action, followed by print media, television and radio in this order.

Attitude

Attitude defines the degree to which advertisements are able to change the beliefs/attitudes of people towards the product or the brand. This would affect the final buying decision of the product or service. The order for this factor ranges from television, print, internet and radio from most effective to least effective in changing attitude.

Hypothesis 5

The level of “attitude” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with television ads being the most attitudes changing, followed by print media, internet and radio in this order.

Entertainment

According to the information gathered about “entertainment”, television ads come out to be the most effective, followed by radio, print and internet. [Larkin] Television tops the list due to the audio visual effects present. This is followed by radio. The print media shows the entertainment factor through its creative designs and catchy print messages. The internet is considered to be a rational medium providing clear information without the frills.

Hypothesis 6

The level of “entertainment” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with television ads being the most entertaining, followed by radio, print and internet in this order.

Irritation

Advertising effectiveness depends on the users’ receptiveness towards an ad, and on their attitude towards advertising. Non relevant ads on TV, in newspapers and on the radio are perceived as inevitable by consumers; on the Internet, they are considered to be a nuisance. Television and radio ads are considered irritating due to the disturbance they cause during normal TV or radio screening. Print media ads are considered least irritating as they do not hinder normal operation of a newspaper or a magazine.

Hypothesis 7

The level of “irritation” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with internet ads being the most irritating, followed by television, radio and print media in this order.

Deceptiveness

Another important factor to calculate effectiveness of a medium is to measure the credibility of the medium. According to our research about the subject [Larkin], television ads seem to be to the most deceiving because of the lower “airing time”, thus the effect could be deceptive and important facts about the product are left out. This is followed by radio and print, with internet being the least deceptive due to the depth of information present on the internet.

Hypothesis 8

The level of “deceptiveness” of advertisements varies significantly across the various forms of media, with television ads being the most deceiving, followed by radio, print media, and internet in this order.

Overall Perception

The overall perception of advertising media effectiveness has been taken to get an overall picture of the effectiveness.

Hypothesis 9

On general/overall perception of the customer, television is the most effective, followed by print media, radio and internet in this order.

METHODOLOGY

Scale Development

The scale items were adopted from Ducoffe [1996] and Leong et al [1998]. A total of 17 statements were used for the proposed scale. A 5-interval scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree was used to measure the response to each item. The respondents were given special instructions to not get biased towards a particular advertisement, brand or a product, rather evaluate each media as a whole.

The internal reliability score was measured using Cronbach’s alpha. The coefficient alpha reliability indicates that the items in each scale are significantly high above 0.7, except for Deceptiveness and Irritation. Though the value of alpha is not significantly low, this lower value is approximately equal to 0.6 which is close to the acceptable value.

The instrument thus used was a 17-item scale, with eight underlying factors viz. informativeness, attention, emotion, precipitating action, attitude, entertainment, irritation and deceptiveness. The results were analysed by comparison of the means using the ‘One Way Anova’ and ‘Tukey b Test’, was applied to see the difference between the effectiveness of different media on the basis of the eight parameters listed above. This was followed by ‘Terpstra – Jonckheere Test’ to confirm our order of alternatives.

The scale items are listed below-

Table 1: Scale Items

Respondents

Our survey was taken by 106 respondents in the age group of 18-30 years. Considering the kind of research we were conducting, only those people who had been exposed to all the four media viz. TV, Radio, Print and Internet were chosen to take our survey. Respondents were also asked to rank various media in terms of effectiveness with 1 assigned to the most effective medium and 4 to the least.

RESULTS

Result 1: Informativeness

The level of “informativeness” varies significantly across different media, with respondents rating radio as the least informative. Though respondents consider internet most informative, followed by print and television, the tests reveal that the difference between this three different media is not significant enough to be considered. This is consistent with our hypothesis.

Result 2: Attention

The level of “attention” varies significantly across various media with respondents rating radio to have the least level of attention. Though respondents consider television the most attention catching, followed by print and internet, the tests reveal that the difference is not significant in the case of internet and print media, thus might not be considered. This result is slightly different than our hypothesis, according to which internet had the least level of “attention”. The reason for such a difference could be the difference in times from when the article was written and when the survey was taken.

Table 2 : Reactions to Advertising on Various Media – Measurement Model

Means

Scale

Relia-bility

Signi-ficance

Level

TV

Radio

Print

Internet

Informativeness

3.512

3.031

3.742

3.746

0.698

0.000

Ads provide relevant product information.

3.717

3.160

4.123

3.840

Ads are sources of up-to-date product info.

4.038

3.425

3.934

4.105

Ads supply complete product information.

2.783

2.509

3.170

3.330

Attention

4.344

2.986

3.642

3.524

0.768

0.000

Ads are attractive/eye-catching.

4.434

2.698

3.745

3.651

Ads are effective in producing engaging messages

4.255

3.274

3.538

3.396

Emotions

3.778

2.835

2.901

2.651

0.543

0.000

Ads give details about the product, but do not stimulate emotions* (Negative Question)

2.264

3.047

3.189

3.359

I am touched by ads.

3.821

2.717

2.991

2.660

Precipitating Action

3.953

2.698

3.755

3.255

0.737

0.000

I have thought of buying an advertised product after watching the ad.

3.953

2.698

3.755

3.255

Attitude

4.118

3.340

3.717

3.481

0.737

0.000

Ads help people change their attitude towards the brand/company.

4.170

3.349

3.821

3.547

Ads help people change their beliefs related to the product.

4.066

3.330

3.613

3.415

Entertainment

4.335

3.151

3.340

3.288

0.762

0.000

Ads are enjoyable

4.245

3.255

3.330

3.179

Ads are exciting

4.425

3.047

3.349

3.396

Irritation

2.871

2.988

2.522

3.006

0.573

0.000

Ads insult people’s intelligence

2.755

2.623

2.472

2.566

Ads are annoying

3.076

3.528

2.585

3.585

Ads are confusing

2.783

2.811

2.509

2.868

Deceptiveness

3.698

3.590

3.349

3.590

0.561

0.010

Ads lie

3.660

3.406

3.330

3.613

Important facts about the products are left out of the ads

3.736

3.774

3.368

3.566

Mean responses to the item, n=106 (1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree)

* Significant at 5% level of significance

** Cronbach’s Alpha Reliability Test was used

Table 3 : Terpstra – Jonckheere Test for ordered Alternatives –

HYPOTHESIS TESTING

PARAMETERS

HYPOTHESIS

Rank of different Media

[from highest to lowest]

T-J Statistic*

Sig.

1

Informativeness

Internet >Print >TV >Radio

7.269

0.000

2

Entertainment

TV >Radio >Print >Internet

7.254

0.000

3

Irritation

Internet >TV >Radio >Print

4.043

0.000

4

Deceptiveness

TV >Radio >Print >Internet

1.768

0.077

5

Attention

TV >Radio >Print >Internet

4.495

0.000

6

Emotions

TV >Radio >Print >Internet

8.340

0.000

7

Precipitating Action

Internet >Print >TV >Radio

3.161

0.002

8

Attitude

TV >Print >Internet >Radio

7.536

0.000

FINDINGS TESTING

PARAMETERS

FINDINGS

Rank of different Media

[from highest to lowest]

T-J Statistic*

Sig.

1

Informativeness

Internet >Print >TV >Radio

7.269

0.000

2

Entertainment

TV >Print >Internet >Radio

8.963

0.000

3

Irritation

Internet >Radio >TV >Print

4.889

0.000

4

Deceptiveness

TV >Internet >Radio >Print

3.049

0.000

5

Attention

TV >Print >Internet >Radio

10.386

0.000

6

Emotions

TV >Print >Radio >Internet

8.595

0.000

7

Precipitating Action

TV >Print >Internet >Radio

9.697

0.000

8

Attitude

TV >Print >Internet >Radio

7.536

0.000

* Significant at 5% level of significance

After having performed Tukey-B’s test to check which particular medium differs significantly from others, : Terpstra – Jonckheere Test for ordered Alternatives was performed tovalidate the prescribed order of mediums as suggested by the hypothesis and key findings.

These results were in conformance with those obtained by the Tukey B test.

Result 3: Emotions

The level of “emotion” varies significantly across the different media, with respondents rating television to have the greatest level of emotion. This was followed by radio and print in the same order, although the tests revealed that this difference is not significant enough to be considered. Internet was considered to have the least emotion. Our hypothesis is quite similar to the result, with only difference between radio and print. This could be due to the latest trend of social messages in print advertisements.

Result 4: Precipitating Action

The level of “precipitating action” varies significantly across the different media with respondents rating radio to have the least level of “precipitating action” followed by internet. Though respondents consider television to have the most precipitating action, followed by print media, the tests reveal that this difference is not significant enough to be considered. This result is significantly different than our hypothesis according to which internet has the most precipitating action, followed by print, television and radio. This could be due to the increasing popularity of telemarketing in the current times.

Result 5: Attitude

The level of “attitude” varies significantly across the different media with respondents rating radio to have the least level of “attitude” and television to have the most. Though respondents consider internet and print to follow television, the tests reveal that this difference between internet and print is not significant enough to be considered. This is similar to our hypothesis.

Result 6: Entertainment

The level of “entertainment” varies significantly across the different media, with respondents rating television as the most entertaining. This was followed by internet and print, although the tests reveal that this difference is not significant enough to be considered. Radio was found to be least entertaining The only difference in the result from the hypothesis is the position of radio which according to the hypothesis is the second most entertaining after television. This change could be attributed again to the changing times, where radio advertising has taken a back seat in comparison to the print and internet media.

Result 7: Irritation

The level of “irritation” varies significantly across the different media, with respondents rating print as the least irritating. Though respondents consider internet most irritating, followed by radio and television, the tests reveal that this difference is not significant enough to be considered. The hypothesis also yields the same result.

Results 8: Deceptiveness

The level of “deceptiveness” varies significantly across various media, with respondents rating print as the least deceptive, but the tests reveal that the difference in print, internet and radio are not significant enough to be considered. Though respondents consider television most deceptive, followed by internet and radio, the tests reveal that this difference is not significant enough to be considered. The hypothesis is same for the most deceptive media, but according to the hypothesis, internet is least deceptive.

Result 9: Overall Perception

Table 4 :Mean rankings of various media

Media

Mean Rankings

Television

1.3208

Print

2.4906

Internet

2.8113

Radio

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