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The impact of consumer channel switching, or "zapping," on the effectiveness of TV commercials is addressed. Among the more significant findings in this research is the result that nonzappers can recall more of the brands advertised than zappers. Furthermore, for brands that are successfully recalled by zappers, those placed toward the end of a commercial break achieve the highest level of recall.
CONSUMERS CAN ALWAYS avoid television advertising by physically leaving the room or engaging in other activities, such as talking to other people around or performing household tasks, or electronically by pressing a button on the remote control to change channels. Channel switching during commercials, also known as channel surfing, channel grazing, or zapping, has become a potentially serious problem for advertisers.
Zapping on the television advertising industry has been studied by many researchers (e.g., Heeter and Greenberg, 1985; Kaplan, 1985; Yorke and Kitchen, 1985; Greenberg and Heeter, 1987; Greene, 1988; Ainslie, 1989; Bollier, 1989; Gilbert, 1989; Sylvester, 1990; van Meurs, 1998). The majority of these studies have focused on the description of the extent and pattern of zapping behavior and profiling the zapping-prone audience. However, few strong conclusions can be drawn because these studies used self reports of viewing behavior. Later studies by R. D. Percy and Company (see Danaher, 1995) used actual zapping behavior from people meters rather than retrospective self-reports, but still it is difficult to make conclusive statements because all data were aggregated.
Regarding the determinants of zapping behavior, Stewart and Furse (1986) and Biel (1990) find that the ability of the advertisement to provide new and useful information affects the level of zapping. Pechman and Stewart (1988), Schumann et al. (1990), and Goldberg et al. (1993) look at the wearin and wearout effects produced by advertising repetition. During wearin, additional exposures to an advertisement have a positive effect, while at a certain point, wearout effects dominate when these exposures cease to have a positive effect--or may even produce a negative effect. Siddarth and Chattopadhyay (1998) found a U- or J-shaped relationship between repeated exposures to an advertisement and the probability of zapping, with zapping elasticity reaching its minimum value at around 14 exposures and increasing rapidly thereafter. The length of advertisements was studied by Patzer (1991), Singh and Cole (1993), and Pieters and Bijmolt (1997), while the number of channels subscribed was studied by Walker and Bellamy (1991) and Weimann (1995). Zufryden, Pedrick, and Sankaralingam (1993) found that commercials aired during prime-time have a slightly higher likelihood of being zapped. Kaplan (1985), Heeter and Greenberg (1985), and Siddarth and Chattopadhyay (1998) found higher levels of channel switching for commercial pods around the hour/half-hour mark than at other times. More recently, van Meurs (1998) looked at the program before and after the break, programming on the other channels, and characteristics of the commercials within the break. Finally, the mediating effects of attitudes toward advertisements were studied by MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch (1986) and Lee and Lumpkin (1995).
A few other studies looked at the effect...
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Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 World Advertising Research Center Ltd.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A78364121
Traditional advertising is making a comeback.
Recent studies show that marketers are increasingly turning from online advertising to traditional media such as TV, in part to exploit its high reach. In February 2022, marketers predicted that traditional advertising spending would increase by 2.9%.
However, effective TV advertising requires exposure, which is jeopardized when viewers deliberately avoid ads. For instance, when viewers resort to changing the channel (i.e., zapping) during ad breaks, advertisers lose the ability to communicate the brand message, leading to wasted investment. Zapping is also a problem for broadcasters because it reduces the reach of the entire ad break and thus diminishes the attractiveness of the channel for advertisers.
In our new Journal of Marketing article involving two related studies, we investigate the role of TV ad content in driving or mitigating viewers’ zapping behavior. Our first study draws on a unique multisource dataset from a German TV broadcaster to answer the following questions:
- Which content factors drive or mitigate viewers’ zapping behavior?
- Do these effects depend on the type of category?
The dataset comprises information on the viewing behavior of more than 2,500 individuals and expert-coded ad content of 1,315 ads in the context of a major TV show: The Voice of Germany. The ad content data reflect six content factors:
- Informativeness
- Brand presence (i.e., featuring the brand prominently)
- Brand timing (i.e., showing the brand early in the ad)
- Positive emotionality
- Creativity
- Humor
Results show that the content of the ads does indeed influence consumers’ zapping behavior. While a high level of creativity in the ads reduces zapping, highly informational content, strong brand presence, and early brand timing increase zapping. Thus, to discourage zapping behavior, managers should invest in creativity and refrain from too much information and too many branding cues. Furthermore, the brand should be placed more toward the end of the ad.
We also conclude that the effects of advertising content on zapping vary significantly with category characteristics. For example, informativeness is more detrimental in terms of zapping for goods where consumers can only judge quality after consumption (in so-called experiential goods like restaurants) than for goods where consumers can judge quality before consumption (in so-called search goods like electronics). The effects of other content factors are category dependent as well, thereby underscoring the need for managers to consider category characteristics when selecting advertising content.
In our second study, we investigate why these content factors influence zapping. We collected survey information on 11 psychological responses from 3,037 viewers for a subsample of 276 ads. These 11 psychological responses reflect two broad psychological response factors: enjoyment (determined, for example, by liking, showing interest, feeling touched, or being entertained) and irritation (determined, for example, by annoyance, exaggeration, skepticism, offense, or feeling overwhelmed). Combining the two studies’ datasets, we examine how enjoyment and irritation explain the effect of content on zapping.
Results of the second study indicate that content drives zapping through irritation, but not through enjoyment. In other words, it is more important for advertisers to avoid psychological reactions reflecting irritation, such as annoyance or offense, than to elicit favorable reactions reflecting enjoyment, such as entertainment or interest. These results further show that informativeness, brand presence, and brand timing drive zapping by triggering irritation, and creativity mitigates zapping by reducing it.
Read the full article.
From: Maren Becker, Thomas Scholdra, Manuel Berkmann, and Werner Reinartz, “The Effect of Content on Zapping in TV Advertising,” Journal of Marketing.
Go to the Journal of Marketing
Maren Becker is Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Cologne, Germany.
Thomas P. Scholdra is Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Cologne, Germany.
Werner J. Reinartz is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Research in Retailing (IFH), University of Cologne, Germany.
Manuel Berkmann is Project Manager, Phoenix Group.