To understand Internet advertising effectiveness, special features of advertising formats should be assessed. In this regard, marketers must develop new criteria for measuring online advertising effectiveness. First, the effectiveness criteria should be totally revised, and a set of new features must be defined so that marketers can utilize the new criteria for online advertising measurement. Then, advertisers must develop a typology of different online advertising formats and scrutinize scholars’ research in an online context. In this chapter, Internet advertising is discussed from two points of view: first, from a general viewpoint (effectiveness in advertising as whole), and then from each format’s viewpoint.
TopEffectiveness Criteria
Thanks to its central role in setting goals and measuring results, effectiveness criteria have a long record with the promotion mix in general and advertising in particular. In 1898, Luis, the first writer of advertising, developed the famous four-term method: attention, interest, desire and action. After that, criteria became a basic issue in advertising. First, Lavidge and Steiner (1961) introduced the hierarchy of effects or CAB (Cognitive, Affection, and Behavior). In this hierarchy, which was based on the stepladder method, attention resulted in interest, interest resulted in ideas, ideas resulted in desire and finally desire resulted in action. These factors were then classified into the three larger classes of cognition, affection and attempt, which later turned into behavior. Cognition is related to the information-processing abilities of individuals, including perception, learning, remembering, judging and problem-solving, and it refers to the forming and abstraction of knowledge in the mind. Affection deals with emotional and attitudinal aspects of meaning like love and hate, and behavior is related to the visible actions of people.
Researchers believed that setting goals and measuring advertisement effectiveness should be done with all three criteria of CAB rather than using one or two of them because customers have complete emotional responses to promotional efforts based on a combination of cognitive, affective and psychological responses (Kershel, 1984). Therefore, it is expected that advertising goals management and the results of effectiveness criteria can be performed in the same framework.