| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
Readers of newspapers and magazines have become accustomed to an environment in which media content and advertisements are blended on the same page. The television industry has recently begun to split the screen into several viewing windows and to display different types of information in different parts of the screen. In the near future, it may become typical for television programs to display advertisements all the time in the corner of the screen, a stimulus much like animated banner advertisements on the Web. This may mean that media users will have to deal simultaneously with what they have chosen to watch and what they have not chosen to watch. Finally, the results of this study can help researchers have a better understanding of the interaction between primary content and secondary advertisements displayed simultaneously in an online environment.