Re: Pop-Ups/Unders Dilemma

From: S. Shyam Sundar <sss12_at_psu.edu>
Date: Wed 02 Oct 2002 13:30:18 -0500

It's interesting you should bring it up, Harsha. We did measure
attitude toward product, product involvement, and purchasing
intentions, but none of these dependent variables showed significant
variations as a function of ad type (pop-up vs. banner) or animation
condition or a combination of the two. Therefore, we don't have any
reason to believe that memory for pop-up ad content is of a negative
kind. Or of a positive kind, for that matter. This is yet another
example of a long line of psychology research which shows that
attitudes don't always logically correlate with memory.

Speaking of attitude research, especially about such things as
pop-ups, one has to be careful in distinguishing between studies that
do and do not elicit "demand characteristics." If you openly ask
study participants what they think of pop-up ads, of course they'll
say they are annoyed by them, but this kind of a response is
insufficiently reflective of deeper psychological effects of media
stimuli. For all we know, they might have processed the ad
information, despite the immediate negative affect, but over time,
lose the affect while retaining the information processed (kind of
like "sleeper effect"-- disassociating source from content over time).

Shyam

S. Shyam Sundar, PhD
(aka Shyam Sundar Sethuraman)
Associate Professor & Co-Director,
Media Effects Research Laboratory (http://www.psu.edu/dept/medialab)
College of Communications
Pennsylvania State University
212, Carnegie Building
University Park, PA 16802-5101

Voice: (814) 865-2173
Fax: (814) 863-8044
E-Mail: sss12_at_psu.edu
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Received on Wed Oct 02 2002 - 13:30:18 CDT