Effective frequency in advertising

Abstract

Advertising has always been a vital part of any marketing program. A good advertising program needs to get three core decisions right - the content of the message, the channel used for the communication and the frequency of the advertising message. The ideal frequency of Advertising message in print and traditional media has been studied extensively and a rule of thumb of three exposures for an advertising message has been a rule of thumb in the industry. In this context, modern communication channels, in one hand, offer a much more engaging platforms, they also suffer from the lack of atention from the users. Hence, it is important to revisit the effective frequency for advertising messages on online platforms, specifically in modern messaging platforms. This study sets up an experiment to validate the models used for advertising information processing and in the process also establish the effective frequency of advertising messages in WhatsApp messaging platform. Using a sample of 349 data points received from 54 volunteers, the experimental study was able to validate the advertising information processing model in WhatsApp messaging platform. The study also showed that the advertising campaign is most effective after 9-10 exxposures of the advertisement in the platform. It was also found that Attitude towards Ad mediates the relationship between Ad Recall (cognition) and Attitude toward Brand (Affect) and Attitude toward Brand in turn mediates the relationship between Attitude towards Ad and Purchase Intention. Keywords: effective frequency of advertisement, information processing model, two-factor theory, experimental research, WhatsApp.