Online advertising and congruency effects: it depends on how you look at it

Three studies investigate the moderating role of divided attention in the relationship between thematic (in)congruency between a web page and a web ad, and evaluations of and click intention towards the embedded web ad.

Online advertising and congruency effects: it depends on how you look at it

Wim Janssens

Hasselt University and University of Antwerp

Patrick De Pelsmacker

University of Antwerp and Ghent University

Maggie Geuens

Ghent University and Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School

Advertisements usually do not appear in isolation but instead are embedded in a specific medium, surrounded by other information, such as editorials, programmes, articles, other ads and so on (Soldow & Principe 1981; Chook 1985). Substantive evidence shows that the medium influences people’s responses to embedded ads (Perry et al. 1997; De Pelsmacker et al. 2002; van Reijmersdal...

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