The Effectiveness of Split-screen Television Advertisement: An Eye-tracking Study

Abstract

In the regular format (full-screen) of advertisement, viewers have multiple ways to avoid exposures to the advertisement. To reduce such Ad avoidance behavior, another form for television advertising, the split-screen format has been proposed as an alternative. The present study aims to identify the effect of this alternative advertisement format on ad processing. An empirical investigation was conducted to compare the full-screen format and split-screen format of advertising, in terms of visual attention and brand memory. Results indicate that there is no direct relationship between screen format and memory for the brands being advertised. However, the indirect effect through visual attention was significant. In contrast to our prediction, compared to split-screen, the full-screen format increases visual attention on advertisement and consequently brand memory. We additionally investigated whether program involvement level (in term of sports interest and cycling interest) moderate the relationship and found out that full-screen format leads to higher visual attention and brand memory than the split-screen format in low and medium program involvement level, whereas there is no difference in two formats for high involvement program.