Can Personalization or Creativity Reduce Banner Blindness?

Abstract

To counter banner blindness, practitioners often use a media-based personalized advertising strategy to target consumers. Another approach, however, is suggested here, a creativity-based strategy. To compare the two strategies, the authors explored a psychology framework—executive functions—that explains why a creativity-based strategy may work better in some situations. Two key executive functions, inhibitory control and working memory, keep consumers focused on media content rather than on banner advertisements. Highly creative advertising, however, activates another executive function, cognitive flexibility, which counters inhibitory control, so advertisements sometimes get increased attention. The authors applied an eye-tracking experiment and took several measures of advertisement effectiveness. Contrary to expectations, personalized advertising was found to lead to better memory responses, moderately higher attention, and somewhat more positive brand attitudes when consumers are casually surfing. Highly creative advertising, however, still garnered more attention overall and also led to even more positive brand attitudes when consumers were using media in a goal-directed way. Although the authors argue that a creativity approach may work better in most situations, it is also possible that both strategies can be implemented at the same time.