Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? Examining the effectiveness of banner ads at game portals and exploring the role of attention on the memory of these banner ads. Marijn Keijzer Ard Heuvelman and Oscar Peters August 2009 University of Twente Faculty of Behavioral Sciences P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede The Netherlands [email protected] Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 2 Abstract This study examined the effectiveness of banner ads at game portals. It was predicted that the recall and recognition of banner ads would be low, due to the amount of attention needed to play the game. As predicted, recall and recognition of banner ads were very low. Participants could hardly remember one banner ad in the free and cued recall tasks. Recognition of banner ads turned out to be very poor as well, participants could only recognize one third of the banner ads being showed. Besides examining the effectiveness of banner ads, this research also explores the role of attention in recall of banner ads. By manipulating gaming experience and type of game, an attempt was made to find out differences in attention. It was predicted that in a skill game experienced players would score higher on recall and recognition tasks than novice players, due to the levels of attention in both conditions. It was also predicted that there would be no differences in recall and recognition between the experienced and novice players in the brain game condition. Results indicate that experienced participants in the skill game condition indeed recognized more banner ads than participants in the novice condition. These differences could not be found in scores of the recall tasks. As predicted, in the brain game condition, no differences in gaming experience were found. Results showed that attention plays an important role in memorizing banner ads on game portals. Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 3 Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? Examining the effectiveness of banner ads at game portals and exploring the role of attention on the memory of these banner ads. Have you ever played a game on a game portal? Let me ask you a question, did you see advertisements around the game? And if you did, do you remember the brands being displayed? No? Well, you are not the only one. This research examines the recall and recognition of banner ads placed next to games on game portals and aims to find out the reason for forgetting these advertisements. Banner ads There are many types of advertising on the web, for example banners, buttons, text links, sponsorships and target sites. From all of these forms of advertising, banner advertisements (banner ads) are the most prevalent and popular ones and they became the standard web advertising format (Cho, 2003; Li & Leckenby, 2004). With banner advertising, advertisers pay an internet company for displaying static or hyper-linked banners or logos on one or more of the company’s web pages (Internet Advertising Bureau, IAB, 2009). According to IAB, banner ads deliver an important contribution to the total revenue of internet advertising. From all display-related advertising revenues in 2008, banner ads are the greatest contributors with 21 percent ($ 4.9 billion), followed by rich media (7 percent), digital video (3 percent) and sponsorship (2 percent). Because of this popularity, much research on the effectiveness of banner ads was done. Most of this research is focused on click-through rates: the ratio of clicks on the banner ads over the total exposure to visitors (Cho, 2003; Lohtia, Donthu, & Hershberger, 2003; Dahlén, Rasch, & Rosengren, 2003). Cho (2003) and Drèze and Hussherr (1999) indicate that click- Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 4 through rates show very disappointing results. Fortunately, click-through rates are not the only indication of banner effectiveness. Bayles (2000) for example argued that simply looking at click-through rates does not consider key concerns like brand awareness, recognition and recall of the products being advertised. Research shows that even without click-through, banner ads can result in increased ad awareness and brand perceptions and shifts in attitudes (Briggs & Hollis, 1997). The effectiveness of banner ads depends on several factors. Cho (2003) made a distinction between consumer-related factors, for example need for cognition and involvement, and contextual factors like type of media and environment in which the banner ads are placed. This research is mainly focused on the influences of the contextual factors on the recall of banner ads. Banner ads on game portals A specific environment in which banner ads are displayed, are game portals. These are online websites where people can play games. Because the games are often surrounded by banner ads, they can be played for free. Different types of advertising are possible on game portals, for example display ads, which are simple banner ads, and pre- and postgame ads which are shown before and after playing the game (Newzoo, 2009). In the Netherlands, online games are very popular. Dutch people above eight years spend an average of four hours a week playing games. 48 percent of these four hours is played on game portals (TNS NIPO, 2008). Because of this fact, it is not a surprise that game portals are very popular among advertisers. Although there has been much research on effectiveness of banner advertising in general, little research was done on the effectiveness of banner ads in the context of game portals. It is possible that there are differences in banner recall within different contexts, for example different websites. Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 5 In the next paragraph the relation between context influences and information processing of banner ads will be discussed. Brand information processing Brand information processing is defined as the extent to which consumers allocate attention and processing resources to comprehend and elaborate brand information in an ad (MacInnis, Moorman, & Jaworski, 1991). The level of processing of the ads influences the encoding, storage and retrieval of the message (Lang, 2000). This process is influenced by several factors, for example motivation, the desire or readiness to process brand information in an ad, ability, consumers’ skills to interpret brand information in an ad, and opportunity, the extent to which distractions or limited exposure time affect the attention of the consumers to the brand information in the ad (MacInnis, Moorman, & Jaworski, 1991). When consumers are performing tasks on websites, they are often so involved in the tasks that all attention is occupied by these tasks, which results in limited ad processing. Therefore attention seems to be an important factor in information processing. This influence is already visible at perception: the human eye registers a large part of the visual field but the fovea registers only a small fraction of that field. To see a particular part of the field, we have to devote our attention to that part (Anderson, 2005, p 79-82). An important theory in the process of visual attention is the Spotlight Metaphor (Posner, 1980). In this theory, visual attention is seen as a spotlight that we can move around to focus on various parts of the visual field. To process a complex visual field we have to pay attention to different parts of the field to uncover the information. An important phenomenon that demonstrates the importance of attention is change blindness (Simons & Levin, 1998). Simons and Levin (1998) show in their experiment an experimenter that initiated a conversation with a pedestrian. During the interaction, the experimenter was replaced by a different experimenter. Only half of the Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 6 participants detected the change. Research of Simons and Chabri (1999) also shows the importance of attention in their experiment on inattentional blindness. They suppose that without attention visual features of our environment will not be perceived. They demonstrated this in the following experiment: participants had to watch a video in which two teams dressed in black and white played basketball. Participants had to pay attention to either the team in white or the team in black depending on the condition they were assigned to. Because the players were intermixed, the task was difficult and required sustained attention. In the middle of the game a person in a gorilla suit entered the room and walked through the game. Results showed that 54 percent of the participants noticed the unexpected event and 45 percent failed to notice the unexpected event. This reveals a substantial level of sustained inattentional blindness for a dynamic event. The results of the experiments mentioned before show the importance of attention in information processing and therefore in examining the effectiveness of banner ads at game portals. The effects of attention on memory of banner ads The limited-capacity model of mediated message processing (Lang, 2000) can be used as a theoretical framework for explaining the effects of attention on memory of banner ads (Diao & Sundar, 2004). The model assumes that people have a limited amount of cognitive resources. In the processing of messages three sub processes are involved: encoding, storage and retrieval. The process of encoding determines which elements of the stimulus, in this case the banner ads, will be transformed into mental representations. The storage process refers to relating the newly encoded information to previous memories stored in the brain. The last process, retrieval, is reactivating a stored mental representation of the message, in this case the banner ad. The limited-capacity model is based on the assumption that memory is an Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 7 associative network. The more links established between new and old information, the better the message is stored. Another assumption is that cognitive resources are independently allocated to the three processes of information processing. In the light of this assumption an increase in resource allocation to one process will result in a decrease of available resources for other processes. Therefore, the identification of factors that affect the allocation of resources to the different processes is an important issue in the processing of banner ads on game portals. Applying the theory of limited-capacity model on the case of banner ads on game portals it is assumed that the more attention is needed to play a game, the less attention will be available for simultaneous sub processes like elaborating the advertisement banners. Therefore it is expected that memory of banner ads on game portals will be low. The first hypothesis is: H1: Participants will have a low performance score on memory tasks for banner ads surrounding the game they are playing. According to Diao and Sundar (2004) measurements of memory of banner ads can be divided into two categories: recall (free and cued) and recognition. Measures of free recall index retrieval, measures of cued recall the thoroughness of storage and measures of recognition index whether information is encoded. If this assumption is true, the game will distract the attention so much that the encoding, storage and retrieval of the banner ads will take place to a small extent. Since game playing consumes a great deal of cognitive capacity, it is hypothesized that both scores of recall and recognition tasks will be low, and that recall of banner ads will be lower than the recognition measures: H1a: Participants will show better performance on the cued recall tasks than on free recall tasks. Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 8 H1b: Participants will show better performance on recognition tasks compared to performance on recall tasks. Gaming experience Gaming experience is expected to affect memory for banner ads. Theories about automaticity assume that when a person performs a task for a few times, the task is executed so automatically that it will require few attention resources (Anderson, 2005, p 282). In case of a person who is playing a game and is simultaneously exposed to banner ads, it is supposed that the game will absorb so much attention, that less cognitive resources are left for processing the banner ads. But when the game becomes more automatic, more attention will be available for processing the banner ads. Therefore, it is hypothesized that there will be a difference between experienced gamers and novice gamers in recall and recognition of banner ads, due to the attention addressed to the game and banner ads: H2. Experienced game players will have a higher score on recall and recognition tasks of banner ads than novice game players. Type of game Another variable that is expected to affect memory of banner ads is type of game. When we look at theories of automaticity it is clear that this cannot be applied to all kind of tasks (Samuels & Flor, 1997; Anderson, 2005). According to Kraiger, Ford and Salas (1993) there are three kinds of learning outcomes in tasks: cognitive outcomes, like verbal knowledge, knowledge organization and cognitive strategies, affective outcomes, like attitudes, motivational disposition, self-efficacy and goal setting and skill-based outcomes, like proceduralization, composition and automaticity. Only in the skill-based condition, tasks will become automatic. Because of this, it is expected that in a skill game some degree of Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 9 automaticity will occur. This will not be the case in a brain game, in which cognitive outcomes are expected. It is assumed that abilities in a skill game will improve, so that after a period of practice the game will demand less attentional resources. The other attentional resources can then be used to process other tasks, like remembering the banner ads. It is therefore expected that there will be differences in scores on recall and recognition tasks for novice and experienced players in a skill game. This cannot be applied to the case of a brain game because the skills cannot become automatic. So it is hypothesized that there will be no significant differences between novice and experienced players in a brain game. H3. In a skill game participants in the experienced condition will have higher scores on recall and recognition tasks of banner ads than participants in the novice condition. H4. In a brain game there will be no differences between novices and experienced gamers in scores on recall and recognition tasks of banner ads. Other variables that will affect recall Research on recall and recognition of banner ads assumes that there are other variables that are likely to affect memory for banner ads, for example involvement (Lee & Faber, 2007), arousal (Diao & Sundar, 2004) and attitude (Cho, 2003; Henthorne, LaTour, & Nataraanjan, 1993). This research also examines the relative influence of these variables. The research question is therefore: RQ: What other variables are likely to affect the recall and recognition of banner ads on game portals? Game portal banner ads: is anybody watching them? 10 Method Design The design of this study was a 2 (game experience: novice player versus expert player) X 2 (type of game: skill game versus brain game) between-subjects factorial design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Participants 102 participants (44 boys and 58 girls) from secondary school Ulenhof College in Doetinchem with an average age of 13.6 (SD = 1.24) participated in the study. The reason that secondary school pupils were chosen is because of the fact that research of TNS NIPO (2008) showed that secondary school pupils spend many hours of the week playing games: 4.6 hours a week for girls and 7.7 hours for boys. Another reason to choose secondary school pupils is because they do not know much about scientific research so that the chance of hypothesis guessing was minimized. Materials A special website was build to gather information from the participants. This website consisted of an experimental page with the game and the banner ads and pages with questionnaires. Games For the condition of the skill game a racing game called Ferrari was used (see for an example of the game: http://www.game1games.com/playgames/1225/ferrari-xv.html). This game was chosen because the game was easy to learn and the fact that it was not possible to crash in the game or to get ‘game over’. That the game was easy to learn was verified in a