Can there be too much of a good thing? The effect of option number on cognitive effort toward online advertisements

Many television viewers are making the transition to online services. One main motivation for this transition is to limit or eliminate advertisement exposure. As a result, online advertisers are developing new techniques to compensate for this avoidance. One technique, advertisement choice, allows online viewers to select the message they watch. Previous research on advertisement choice has shown various cognitive effects. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the number of options presented within this choice moderated these effects. Participants from two Midwestern universities (United States institutions) were randomly assigned to conditions that varied in the number of options. Some participants were not allowed to choose what type of message to watch (i.e. zero options). Other participants were presented with a choice between two, three, or six options. The amount of cognitive effort allocated to the advertisement after the choice manipulation was the dependent variable of this study. The results showed a curvilinear relationship between the number of choice options and cognitive effort. Effort was significantly higher for choices using two and three options compared to no choice and six options. These results demonstrate that there is a complex relationship between advertisement choice and various psychological outcomes for viewers.