More Mutter About Clutter

More Mutter About Clutter Extending Empirical Generaiizations to Facebook

KAREN NELSON-FIELD

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Karen@ Marketingscience.info

This article examines the impact of clutter on advertising placed on Facebook. This platform is quite different from broadcast media, yet the current study unveiled very similar findings as previously seen for television and radio—that advertisements were better recalled when placed among fewer other'advertisements. The improvements

ERICA RIEBE

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

in advertising recall, however, do not appear to be sufficient to justify the likely price

Erica.Riebe@

premium that advertisers would have to pay to reduce clutter on Facebook. The

Marketingscience.info BYRON SHARP

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

research found that larger brands are more immune to clutter than small brands, so low-clutter environments are more important for lesser-known (i.e., smaller and new) brands.

Byron.Sharp@ Marketingscience.info CLUTTER REDUCES BROADCAST ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS

Advertising clutter is widely recognized as a factor that reduces advertising effectiveness by causing avoidance behaviors and memory interference/ impairment (Brown and Rothschild, 1993; Hammer, Riebe, and Kenned, 2009; Jeong, Kim, and Zhao, 2011; Elliott and Speck, 1998; Webb and Ray, 1979; Zhao, 1997). Clutter has been described as having three physical dimensions (Ha and McCann, 2008): • quantity (the actual number of advertisements); • competitiveness (the degree of exclusivity from like brands in the category); and • intrusiveness (the degree of facilitated forced exposure such as pre-roll advertising). It is the quantity dimension of clutter, however, that is said to have the largest negative effect on memory (Brown and Rothschild, 1993; Hammer et al., 2009). Although we acknowledge that perceived advertising clutter is also said to enhance the overall impact of clutter (Ha and McCann, 2008), it is the physical dimensions of clutter that were the focus of this research. The quantity of clutter is said to have an impact in a number of ways: 1 8 6 JOURiL or HDÜERTISinB HESEHRCH June 2 0 1 3

• by reducing the capacity to absorb and make sense of messages when high levels of interference from competing stimuli are present—th.e overload-and-interference effect (Malhotra, Jain, and Lagakos, 1982; May, Hasher, and Kane, 1999); • by forcing audiences to pay attention only lo stimuli that is deemed relevant—the selectiveattention effect (Seamon, 1980); and • by triggering avoidance behaviors due to an audience's natural resistance to forced advertising volume—the reactance effect (Brehm and Brehm, 1981). Marketers widely accept that clutter is detrimental. Generally, it is viewed as an undesirable trade-off for lower-cost reach: doubling clutter potentially halves the price of advertising space. What is not as well known is whether the negative clutter impact is large enough to make it worthwhile to pay the higher price necessary to reduce clutter Also, next to nothing is known about the effect of clutter in "new media." Social media, and in particular Facebook, provide very different advertising settings in which the impact of clutter might be different. Facebook advertising takes a range of different forms such as baruier advertising, brand mentions, and sponsored stories in a user's newsfeed, a branded fan page, and the like. In addition to other DOI: 10.2501/JAR-53-2-186-191

MORE MUHER ABOUT CLUTTER

EMPIRICAL GENERALIZATION Advertising clutter on Facebook reduces the Facebook user's ability to remember the advertisements to which he or she is exposed, but not to the extent that advertisers are likely to prefer a low clutter (but necessarily high priced) advertising space. This is the same pattern seen in television and radio advertising and is particularly problematic for lesser-known brands.

unique qualities of the platform, such tools of audience engagement are so new and so different that the current knowledge of advertising clutter may not extend to this new context. This study is both a close replication and an extension of previous research on clutter, particularly a previous study that consolidated earlier research by considering the clutter effect on audience memory in television and radio environments (Hammer et al., 2009). This prior research concluded that, for television and radio, the quantity of commercials had a small impact on the ability of audiences to remetnber that advertising. The authors concluded that potential improvements in brand recall are insufficient to justify the price increase that would be necessary from reducing advertising inventory (Hammer et al, 2009). We sought to determine whether this finding extended to Facebook, a new and very different high-reach medium. We then investigated whether certain brands—notably large and small brands—were more (or less) susceptible to any observed clutter effect. There is good reason to believe that clutter's impact in broadcast media may not extend to Facebook. In addition to being a potentially more interactive, goal-directed media experience (Ha and McCann, 2008), the Facebook platform also contains a large number of advertisements in a variety of forms. Users quickly are exposed to many brand impressions, some of which are offered simultaneously. Arguably, reduced clutter on Facebook, therefore, may have more of an impact—or, at least.

a different kind of impact—than it might have in other media. Facebook's claimed strength over traditional broadcast media is that it can target specific audiences with more relevant advertising. Traditionally it has been thought that such targeting improves advertising effecfiveness; however, research has shown that such targeting strategies restrict reach to a brand's heaviest buyers and, therefore, are unlikely to lead to brand growth for advertisers (NelsonField, Riebe, and Sharp, 2012; Sharp, Beal, and Collins, 2009). Whether this structural difference moderates the impact of clutter of ad effectiveness is one question that the current study illuminates. METHOD Data Collection

In a large-scale natural experiment, the research team asked 200 participants to log on and use Facebook as they normally would. After this session, respondents were immediately asked to complete a short survey (to determine how well they remembered the advertising to which they had been exposed). In addition to demographic information, brand usage (of all recalled brands) for each respondent also was recorded to eliminate the potential impact of brand usage on results. Respondent use of Facebook was recorded using Mac QuickTime Player software that produced a video file of complete screen use (including mouse movement). The video then w^as examined to identify the advertisements to which respondents had been exposed.

This approach is appropriate for natural experiments, in that the researcher has no influence over which advertisements are included in the research and when exposure occurs. A more natural media-use setting is created for the respondents, as they are not distracted from their use of the media by researchers' directly observing their behavior. Each Facebook session was restricted to 10 minutes, in accordance with the typical single-session length (comScore, 2011). Comparable studies in television and radio were 60 and 20 minutes, respectively, again reflecting typical consumer use (Hammer et al, 2009). The varying lengths of engagement periods, therefore, meant that it is not appropriate to compare average levels of clutter across media. Instead, the current study analyzes the empirical patterns previously observed for TV and radio, comparing them to Facebook. Finding that lower clutter environments in each medium resulted in small gains in advertising effectiveness. A total of 33 hours of Facebook use was recorded for this study; six coders over a period of three months viewed the recorded material and documented the number of advertisements and the brands promoted in the advertisements that respondents were exposed to during these sessions. Overall, close to 10,000 brand impressions were captured across the recorded screens of the 200 respondents. The survey collected respondents' memories of the advertising to which they had been exposed, which later was matched with the recorded exposure information. Each respondent was asked which advertisements they recalled having seen using unaided recall measures (i.e., without asking about specific brands or categories). Respondents were prompted, however, in terms of how they might see a brand impression (i.e., "Did you see banner ads, a specific brand's fan

June 2 0 1 3 JDURIiRL OF RDUERTiSl iG RESERRCH 1 8 7

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT ADVERTISING II

page, brand mentions in the news feed, in

Previous research found that an advertisement's

videos and or friends' comments?"). Such

cues ensured that respondents consid-

chance of being remembered by the audience

ered all brand impressions as exposures

rather than simply sponsored advertis-

diminishes When the advertisement is in an

ing. Including the full variety of brand-

exposure mechanisms is important in the

environment more ciuttered with other advertising.

Facebook context—as opposed to comparable studies for television or radio—as advertising clutter comes from a variety of different sources.

appeared no reason to believe that either

Current brand usage was examined but

gender would be more or less susceptible The Sample

to the effects of clutter, and this was sup-

This study involved 200 urban Austral-

ported by the analysis.

ian Facebook users. Recruitment was

showed no impact on clutter effects. CLUTTER PATTERNS THAT GENERALIZE

Participants varied widely in their

Previous research found that an advertise-

conducted via a snowballing technique,

usage of Facebook. An equal proportion of

ment's chance of being remembered by the

facilitated by an open (public) Facebook

heavy (>60 minutes per day) and lighter

audience diminishes when the advertise-

event. The only criterion set for respond-

(