In the web advertising environment, the role of frequency is more complicated due to the medium’s distinctive characteristics. The web provides an environment where users engage in an active communication process. As a result, web users tend to pay attention to objects within their sphere of interest and ignore or pay less attention to peripheral objects such as online ads that lie outside of this sphere. Moreover, existing research suggests that “wear-out” occurs faster on the web than it does in traditional media. This phenomenon, called “banner burnout”, demonstrates that advertising effectiveness online declines significantly after the first exposure (Pagendarm, & Schaumburg, 2001). Given such distinctive characteristics of the new online medium, countering tedium on the web is an important issue for advertisers who want to increase advertising effectiveness.
The purpose of this research is threefold. First, it attempts to identify potential tedium points in an effort to understand the role of frequency in web advertising. Second, it investigates the impact of ad variation as a way of countering tedium on the web in order to maintain or increase advertising effectiveness. Third, it examines critical variables that may have combined effects on ad variation in the web context. Specifically, the research examines the interaction effects between ad variation and other variables such as frequency, product involvement, brand familiarity, and web experience that are considered important in web advertising.
The research reported here involves two pretests and a main experiment all conducted via the web. Pretest 1 was designed to select a product category and the brands for use in the main experiment. Based on Pretest 1, two credit card brands were selected to be used in Pretest 2 and the main experiment: CapitalOne Visa and American Express. The primary purpose of Pretest 2 was to identify the potential tedium points as a result of repetition of the same ad. Pretest 2 involved a 6 (frequency: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) x 2 (brand familiarity: familiar or unfamiliar) experimental design (N = 230) administered on the web.
For both familiar and unfamiliar brands, the impact of frequency