Interesting Results
When is More Advertising Beneficial?
A 2002 study1 investigated whether increasing media weight (the combination of the number of people seeing an ad and the frequency with which they see it) increases sales. For frequently purchased, established brands in mature product categories, increasing media weight was shown to have a positive effect on sales when:
- Ads contained more emotionally-based elements such as likable sources, emotionally-based drama, and visually appealing pictures.
And no increase in sales from increased media weight occurred when:
- Ads used symbols (such as product experts) to convey messages about products.
- Ads focused on objective factors such as product benefits, product attributes, and comparisons with competitors.
1 MacInnis, Deborah J., Ambar G. Rao, and Allen M. Weiss (2002), “Assessing When Increased Media Weight of Real-World Advertisements Helps Sales”, Journal of Marketing Research, 39(4), 391-407.