The impact of context on display ad effectiveness: Automatic attitude activation and applicability

• Attitude toward the webpage content positively affects ad attitude.
• Attitude-activation effect increases when viewers pay less attention to the ad.
• Attitude-activation effect increases when viewers have a high need for cognition.
• Webpage content attitudes do not necessarily transform into significant mood states.
• A high level of applicability leads to better ad attitude and brand attitude.

Display and search ads are the most popular Internet ad formats. Instead of being placed on search engine result pages, display ads are placed on webpages that include more actual content. In order to improve online contextual advertising, the effects of webpage content on embedded display ads must be understood. This study investigates how viewers’ attitudes toward content and the applicability of that content to the adjacent display ads impact the effectiveness of those ads. The moderating effects of viewers’ attention and need for cognition are also examined. The experimental results show that webpage content automatically activates ad evaluations, and that this effect increases when viewers pay less attention to the ad or have a high need for cognition. If the webpage content is highly applicable to the ad, improvements are seen in the attitude toward the ad and the attitude toward the brand.