Distracted consumers may be the perfect audience for pop-up ads, according to a group of US researchers who found that distractions can ‘create momentum that advertising can ride on.’
The theory of dual-task interference (DTI) states that performing two tasks at the same time negatively impacts performance and that adding stimuli can further impair attention and recall.
But the researchers argue that studies into DTI theories have typically been conducted in ‘static, controlled lab settings.’Their experiment, they claim, is the first to test DTI theories with pop-up ads in ‘a lifelike environment.’
A media-rich setting
The researchers developed a mobile app where participants could play an anagram game, which was occasionally interrupted by pop-up ads. At the same time, they were also asked to watch a 14-minute video of an NFL football game on a TV.
In this way, the researchers immersed the participants in a ‘media-rich environment’ that closely resembled how they might normally use technology. At the end of the experiment, the participants were asked questions about their recall of the pop-up ads.
‘Rather than hurting ad recall, greater engagement with the [anagram] game was positively correlated with remembering the ads. In this context, at least, people’s mental bandwidth wasn’t strictly limited; more active game-engagement seemed to produce mental energy that spilled over into noticing pop-up ads as well,’ the researchers explained in the Harvard Business Review.
They also made minor alterations to the configuration of the screens, as well as the timings and types of ads they delivered, to see how each affected ad recall.
When all three ‘attention grabbers’ (the anagram game, NFL game, and pop-up ads) were shown on the same device in a split-screen set-up, engagement spillover (ie, the rate of ad recall) increased by 11.4%
The researchers hypothesise that ‘low-distance environments’ where stimuli are closer to one another ‘are more fertile ground for interrupting pop-up ads.’ They gave an example of how this might look in the physical world, arguing that marketers using geotargeted ads could benefit from delivering pop-up ads when consumers enter a store instead of when they’re ‘in the parking lot or a block away.’
The rate of recall also increased by 29.9% when the pop-up ads were congruent with the NFL clip and by 12.85%-16.2% when they were delivered ‘at less pressing moments’, such as replays.
What’s the reason for this?
According to the researchers, the reason for this engagement spillover is ‘automaticity’, which is when ‘the mind operates on autopilot.’
‘Our study suggests that when people are highly focused on a “distracting” task such as playing a game on their phone while watching TV, and that task is interrupted, automaticity causes the mind to process both task and interruption as a single event,’ they explain.
Therefore, popular distractions such as video games or messaging apps can be ‘golden opportunities’ for marketers as their messages can ‘piggyback on existing engagement.’
‘In a world full of distractions, your best strategy may be to embrace them,’ the researchers advise.
Featured image: Natasha Hall / Unsplash