Emotional Arousal Shifts the Effect of Ad Placement on Ad Recognition

This study explored whether the arousal and relevance of media content placed in between advertisements moderated the effect of ad placement on ad recognition. Two experiments (N₁ = 60, N₂ = 62) were conducted in which participants viewed static ads that appeared before and after pictures that systematically varied in arousal. Results demonstrated that ads appearing before media content were recognized better than were ads appearing after media content when emotional arousal of media content was high, but that ads appearing after media content were recognized better than were ads appearing before media content when emotional arousal was low. Greater encoding of media content enhanced the memory of ads appearing before media content but not ads appearing after media content. Additionally, content relevance lowered ad recognition, especially during shallower encoding (i.e., encoding without the purpose of remembering). This study contributes to research on ad placement by proposing emotional arousal as a potential block that prevents new information from being encoded into short-term memory. Practically, this study emphasizes the importance of emotional arousal of surrounding content as a crucial factor for optimal ad placement.