Dealing with intrusive ads: a study of which functionalities help consumers feel agency
Aimee Riedel, Clinton S. Weeks, Amanda Beatson
Abstract
This work examines how intrusive advertising negatively impacts brand outcomes, and how this negativity is mitigated by mechanisms that support consumers feeling a greater sense of control. We contend that intrusive advertising leads to psychological reactance and consequently a loss of sense of agency, which results in negative brand outcomes. We examine how this is differentially mitigated by giving agency to consumers through skip, countdown, and choice mechanisms. Across a series of experiments, we show an option to skip advertisements enhances preference but leads to poorer memory for the advertised brand. Adding a countdown that precedes the skip function is similarly associated with enhanced preference but poorer memory. In contrast, we identify that the situations most positive for both preference and memory outcomes are where there is a countdown to the end of the advertisement with no skip functionality, or where consumers have choice over when to view advertisements.