Tag Archives: advertising

News Websites Should Target “Reward Seekers”, MU Researcher Finds

By Guest PostMarch 11, 2013Media, Technologyadvertising, brain friendly designs, Entertainment, gratification, information, media professionals, mobile apps, news organizations, news websites, newspaper sales, paul bolls, readership, revenues, reynolds journalism institute, school of journalism, university of missouri

Website designers should strive for simplicity, invoke emotion to boost online revenue

As newspaper sales continue to decline, many news organizations are searching for ways to improve readership and revenues from their online presences. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that news organizations should target readers with certain personality traits in order to optimize their online viewership. Paul Bolls, an associate professor of strategic communication at the MU School of Journalism and a 2011-2012 MU Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, has found that news consumers who have “reward-seeking” personalities are more likely to read their news online and on mobile devices, and to engage with websites, by leaving comments on stories and uploading user-generated content.

In a study accepted for presentation at the 2013 International Communication Association conference in June, Bolls surveyed more than 1000 respondents and placed them into two personality groups: reward seekers and threat avoiders. He found that reward seekers tend to use the Internet liberally, searching out entertainment and gratification, while threat avoiders tend to be more conservative, looking only for information that directly affects them. Bolls found that respondents identified as reward seekers were much more likely to engage with news websites as well as more likely to use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to consume news. He says this knowledge should direct news organizations to target these reward seekers. (more…)

Buying ad time just got easier

By Guest PostFebruary 28, 2013Technologyadvertising, buy ads, buying ad time, ceo, chen lin, consumers, emory university, fast moving minnows, forms of media, internet, laptop, marketing science, Media, media consumption habits, media multiplexing, michigan state university, most accurate model, print publications, sandy jap, smart phones, sriram venkataraman, surfing the web, tv

Today’s consumers switch between media forms so often – from TV to laptops to smart phones – that capturing their attention with advertising has gone, as one CEO explained, from shooting fish in a barrel to shooting minnows. (more…)

Close as a Blade-Shaving and Masculinity

By Guest PostDecember 9, 2012Cultureadvertising, age of enlightenment, alun withey, auto pogonotomy, beardless age, Britain, charles woodcock, crucible steels, dandy, durable razor, eighteenth century, elegant gentlemen, exeter, fops, historian, history, james stodart, london, masculinity, medical historian, paste for shaving, razor, shaving, steel razor, stuarts, university, victorians

Moustaches from the classic handlebar to the dramatic Dali are soon to be cut short as the month of Mo’vember draws to a close, and clean shaven faces return from their period of charitable exile.

Research by a historian at the University of Exeter into the history of shaving and masculinity in eighteenth century Britain shows the advancement of new technologies in steel and the connection between advertising are inextricably linked to a closer shave.

Shaving chimed in with the Age of Enlightenment, where the advance of knowledge through science was encouraged and notions of gentility, polish, and proper self-presentation were hailed. Numerous middle and upper class men in the 18^th century known as dandy’s or fops placed a great deal of emphasis on physical appearance, were clean shaven and considered themselves elegant gentlemen. To sport a beard or any form of facial hair was considered to be barbarous or associated with a rustic country cousin, rather than a fashionable man about town. In fashionable circles the period between the Stuarts and the Victorians was a beardless age. (more…)

Too Much Information? It Depends …

By Guest PostSeptember 18, 2012Economyadvertising, brown university, cognitive reflection test, colorado, crt, explanation fiends, explanation foes, hypothesis, illusion, julia shube, philip fernbach, psychologist, robert st louis, steven sloman, university

In a new study, psychologists at Brown University and the University of Colorado found that while some people require a detailed explanation of how a product works before they’ll be willing to pay more, others became less willing to pay when confronted with that additional detail. A simple, standard test predicted the desire for detail — who wants more, who wants less.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A study published online in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that people can differ widely on the level of detail makes them feel they understand something. In experiments, the very same explanations that some subjects required before they would pay top dollar seemed to drive down what others were willing to pay. The natural trick for a marketer would be to figure out which customers are which. The study does that, too.

“The fact is that people differ,” said Steven Sloman, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University and an author on the paper. “Your advertising, your marketing, and your understanding of people has to be guided by an appreciation of who you are talking to.” (more…)

Facebook Helps Researchers See How Friendships Form

By Guest PostDecember 21, 2011Culture, Technologyadvertising, basic building blocks, classical, diffusion, emotional health, Facebook, friends, friendship, harvard university, influence, internet, internet and society, internet relationships, jason kaufman, jazz, kevin lewis, marco gonzalez, mechanisms, national science foundation, network, obesity, online social network, patterns of social segregation, relationships, reproduction of inequality, role, society, sociologists, statistical methods

*Long-term study analyzes social selection and peer influence in online environments*

New research funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by three Harvard University sociologists examines how we select our friends and the role that friendship plays in transmitting tastes and new ideas.

Relationships are basic building blocks of society, and understanding who befriends whom can therefore provide insight into patterns of social segregation, mechanisms for the reproduction of inequality, social support (including mental and emotional health), and access to job opportunities. Some have even viewed these relationships as a means to influence behavior whether to control obesity or target advertising. But is it really that easy, even on the Internet, to make friends with people who have different cultural upbringings, different interests, different backgrounds and different tastes in movies, music and books? (more…)

‘Buyer Beware: Advertising May Seduce Your Brain’

By Guest PostSeptember 21, 2011Science, Technologyadvertisers, advertising, amygdala, andrew f leuchter, behavior, brain, cigarette products, cognitive responses to marketing stimuli, david schairer, decision making andemotional processing, eeg, electroencephalography, flat screen tv, george washington university, hippocampus, ian cook, levels of brain activity, logical persuasion, lp, magazines and newspapers, non rational influence, notion of neuromarketing, orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate regions, pretty woman, real world advertisements, sarah k pajot, washing machine

Are you wooed by advertising? Of course you are. After all, it’s one thing to go out and buy a new washing machine after the old one exploded, quite another to impulse-buy that 246-inch flat screen TV that just maybe, in hindsight, you didn’t really need.

Advertisers come at you in two ways. There is the just-the-facts type of ad, called “logical persuasion,” or LP (“This car gets 42 miles to the gallon”), and then there is the ad that circumvents conscious awareness, called “non-rational influence,” or NI (a pretty woman, say, draped over a car). (more…)

Yahoo! Labs Launches AdLabs to Advance the Science of Digital Advertising

By Guest PostFebruary 3, 2011Technologyadlabs, advertising, advertising blog, hong kong, ken mallon, prabhakar raghavan, san francisco, wsdm conference, Yahoo

*New study proves the power of hyperlocal online ad targeting in driving sales*

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Yahoo! Inc. today announced the launch of Yahoo! AdLabs, a group focused on providing scientific leadership to the industry and accelerating innovation in digital advertising products through Yahoo! Labs (https://labs.yahoo.com/), one of the world’s premier industrial research organizations.

“Yahoo! Labs has been instrumental in developing Yahoo!’s advertising products, laying a foundation of scientific research and innovative data analysis, supporting everything from the world’s most advanced display advertising marketplace to the world’s most effective ad targeting capabilities,” said Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo!’s chief scientist and head of Yahoo! Labs. “AdLabs will build on this success and break new ground in combining scientific rigor with a deep understanding of the practical needs of marketers.” (more…)

Windows Phone 7 Takes Aim at Bad Phone Design

By Guest PostNovember 8, 2010Technologyadvertising, at&t, bad mobile, harris interactive, katy asher, katy perry, maroon 5, Microsoft, minka kelly, mobile phone, samsung focus, smartphones, t-mobile, todd peters, united states, windows phone 7, YouTube

*Windows Phone 7 goes on sale today at AT&T and T-Mobile stores throughout the United States. The phone takes a new approach to smartphone design, hopefully addressing some of the “Bad Mobile Phone Behavior” called out in a new survey released today.*

REDMOND, Wash. – Nov. 8, 2010 – The mobile phone, like the craftiest of invasive species, knows no boundaries. It has crept into every inch of our lives, and spotting one in the bathroom or the bedroom can only elicit a weary response: “Really?”

According to a new survey released today, the answer across the country is a resounding – if resigned – “Yes.” (more…)