| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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If they can remember some information in the banner ads presented previously, then they must have seen it. The more they can remember, the more they must have processed. Although this is a simply notion, it has long been recognized that measuring postviewing memory provides limited information about online cognitive processes because many processes such as understanding, attending, and remembering determine memory (A. Lang & Basil, 1998; Thorson, Reeves, & Schleuder, 1985).
Let us examine the following case. Li and Bukovac (1999) wanted to know whether the goal of Web users (information seekers vs. Web surfers) altered recall of banner ads. In this study, information seekers, whose task was to locate specific information, were expected to ignore banner ads. On the other hand, Web surfers, who went online without any specific purpose, were hypothesized to recall more banner ads because they were likely to pay attention to whatever was interesting. The same banner ads were presented to both groups, and free-recall was assessed after browsing. Results showed that there was no difference in recall between the two groups. Does this result tell us that the two groups “processed” the banner ads in the same way? Can we be sure that they looked at the banner ads for the same duration with the same intensity? The recall result of this study provides little information about the mental processes that might have occurred between exposure to the banner ads and the point of recall. Without knowing what had happened between the exposure and the memory outcomes, the authors of this paper had to surmise that “this indifference may be caused by a weak manipulation between the tasks assigned to each of the groups.”
The second way to measure the extent to which banner ads are processed is to use an interference paradigm.