Effects of Interest,Thematic Congruence,and Typicality on Memory for Television,Radio, and Press Advertisements of New Products

Little is known about how the content of advertisements is remembered. We studied how product interest, thematic congruence between advertisement and programme, and the typicality of the elements of an advertisement affect memory for new product ads in television, radio, and printed media. Participants were exposed to a single type of media with two embedded ads. After a filler task, they completed a true/false recognition task. In television and radio, accuracy was higher for the interesting product ads. In three experiments, we found no effect of thematic congruence, and the standard effect of typicality. In printed media, where participants are free to read the ads or not, the differences in hits and false alarms in typicality were due to a change in the response criterion and not to an effect on memory. We conclude that different results can be obtained depending on the exposure to different media. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.