Advertisement avoidance on internet : Can internet printing help ?

While declining click-through rates and banner blindness are raising concerns among internet advertisers, a new advertisement format is gaining momentum slowly, exposure to advertisements on printouts. This is evident from the attempts of various websites to put advertisements on printer-friendly versions or stealth insertions for print function. A before-after study group-control group experiment was conducted on 451 internet users in order to compare advertising effectiveness of cross media advertising of these innovative approaches. The purpose of the study was to test hypothesis regarding the effect of viewing advertisements on internet sites versus prints originating from them. We conducted a behavioral experiment to measure recall of advertisements and advertisement messages, brand attitude and purchase intention as a result of exposure to internet and printout advertisements. Reinforcement of internet advertisements with printouts appeared to increase brand recall significantly. While brand attitudes were unaffected by viewing internet advertisements, consumers perceived brands appearing on their print-outs more favorably. Finally, while internet advertisements were lost in clutter, the advertisements appearing on print-outs were not only noticed, but remembered as well. The findings indicate towards an opportunity of extending ecommerce by reaching the consumers through an innovative route – their print-outs. External Posting Date: July 6, 2008 [Fulltext] Approved for External Publication Internal Posting Date: July 6, 2008 [Fulltext] Submitted to ACM SIG EC08, ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce (SIGECOM) © Copyright 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Advertisement avoidance on internet: Can internet printing help? Nidhi Mathur HP Labs, Bangalore, India nidhim@hp.com Abstract: While declining click-through rates and banner blindness are raising concerns among internet advertisers, a new advertisement format is gaining momentum slowly, exposure to advertisements on printouts. This is evident from the attempts of various websites to put advertisements on printer-friendly versions or stealth insertions for print function. While declining click-through rates and banner blindness are raising concerns among internet advertisers, a new advertisement format is gaining momentum slowly, exposure to advertisements on printouts. This is evident from the attempts of various websites to put advertisements on printer-friendly versions or stealth insertions for print function. A before-after study group-control group experiment was conducted on 451 internet users in order to compare advertising effectiveness of cross media advertising of these innovative approaches. The purpose of the study was to test hypothesis regarding the effect of viewing advertisements on internet sites versus prints originating from them. We conducted a behavioral experiment to measure recall of advertisements and advertisement messages, brand attitude and purchase intention as a result of exposure to internet and printout advertisements. Reinforcement of internet advertisements with printouts appeared to increase brand recall significantly. While brand attitudes were unaffected by viewing internet advertisements, consumers perceived brands appearing on their print-outs more favorably. Finally, while internet advertisements were lost in clutter, the advertisements appearing on print-outs were not only noticed, but remembered as well. The findings indicate towards an opportunity of extending e-commerce by reaching the consumers through an innovative route – their print-outs.