World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how self-brand congruity and ad duration impact the effectiveness of an advertisement. The longstanding hierarchy of effects model is assessed within a new context, embedded online video advertisements. In testing this advertising framework, an online experiment was administered based on a two (self-brand congruity) X two (ad duration) between-subjects design. Six dependent measures were used to examine the effectiveness of the ads and three brand personality dimensions (excitement, sophistication, ruggedness) were included in the model as replicates. As anticipated, subjects that viewed ads that were 30-seconds in length were able to recall significantly more ad-related information than participants who saw ads that were 15-seconds long. Self-brand congruity did not have as sizeable of an impact as expected. Nevertheless, within certain brand personality dimensions, this factor produced significant results. The findings of this study suggest many key considerations for advertising strategy in addition to abundant suggestions for future research in the area of online video advertising.