TWO STUDIES ON DYNAMIC ONLINE MARKETING: EVIDENCE FROM EYE-TRACKING
Abstract:
Dynamic and acoustic media have provided website owners with tremendous opportunities to arouse and engage their viewers. Hence, marketers have incorporated numerous rich media to deliver dynamic product experiences to consumers. For example, traditional static banner ads and pictorial product presentation have been enriched with animations and videos.
In practice, the design and applications of these marketing practices vary largely. For example, some video ads have adopted autoplay features while others remain in the traditional click-to-play method. Also, other than static pictures, many animated features have been used for online product presentation, including zooming, rotation, and the usage of animations and videos. However, rigorous comparisons of the practices are rather scarce, so that user reactions towards them have not been fully understood. This thesis investigates the design and effectiveness of two widely applied dynamic media used for online marketing, which are video display ads and animations for product presentation. Adopting a consumer behavior perspective, this thesis provides evidence of users' behavioral, cognitive and affective reactions to different designs of the two practices.
The thesis consists of two empirical studies: Study One explores the effectiveness of video display ads. Specifically, it examines two design factors of video ads, which are video initiating formats and the design of the ad disclosure. Currently, three initiating formats are widely adopted, namely click-to-play, full autoplay and silent autoplay. Study One thus compares the effects of these three video initiating formats on consumer reactions and advertising effectiveness. Moreover, Study One takes the visual prominence of ad disclosure into the research framework and examines its moderating effects on the effects of video initiating formats. Drawing on the psychological reactance theory and literature on persuasion, human attention and interest, Study One hypothesizes that different video initiating formats and disclosure prominence lead to differences in viewers' attention to, attitudes towards, and memory of a video ad. A 3*2 laboratory experiment with the eye-tracking technology was conducted to understand the consumer reactions and to test the hypotheses. The detailed results and implications are presented and discussed, followed by the discussion of future research.
Study Two investigates a special kind of animated imagery' cinemagraph and compare it with two related formats' photograph and animation in the context of online product presentation. A cinemagraph is a special type of animation characterized by the contrast and coexistence of motion and stillness due to artificial manipulation. This format inspired visual artists and marketers and has been used in online marketing campaigns. However, the effects of cinemagraphs for online product presentation require further examination. Therefore, Study Two examines the effects of cinemagraphs on the performance of online product presentation. Drawing on the competition for attention theory, the attention-guiding principle, and incongruity theories of curiosity, Study two hypothesizes that these different image formats have different effects on human visual attention and product interest. In addition, this study investigates consumers' visual processing of cinemagraphs using eye-tracking technology. Two lab experiments are conducted to test the hypotheses. The results, implications, and contributions are discussed.