New Media Interactive Advertising vs. Traditional advertising

A. Bezjian-Avery, Bobby Calder and Dania Cobucci (1998)

The main purpose with this article was to establish the main differences between the traditional "linear" form of advertisement and and the interactive advertisement provided by the so called new media. For this end the researchers conducted an experiment in which they expose a group of volunteers to both forms of advertisement and compare then the results in order to determine the pros and cons of each modality.

The main conclusions they came to was that in many cases traditional linear advertising turned out to be more effective than the interactive ads. This effectiveness was measured based on two main factors:

1. the engagement level: how much time the consumers spend considering and paying attention to the message of the advertising. 
2. the level of persuasiveness: how positive the consumers are about their purchase intentions. 

For doing this experiment the researchers made sure to show the same message (the same message content and the same photos and graphical profile) in both advertising modes (traditional and interactive). They found out that although interactive advertisement get the viewer more engaged and active, in many cases this interactivity implied that the volunteers did not focus much on the message but rather in the interactivity itself. Traditional linear advertising proved to be at least equally effective and in some cases even more effective than interactive ads. 

The authors conclude by saying that more research in this area is needed and that the effectiveness of interactive ads may dramatically improve as people get more used to the narrative form of the new media.