Dynamic by Design: How Incorporating Dynamism in Advertising Affects Evaluations

As consumers spend more time engaging with digital media and companies shift marketing budgets accordingly, the number of digital advertisements capable of incorporating dynamic design elements has also increased. Traditional media, like television commercials, have long incorporated movement and action, but very little research has considered the potential consequences that subtle dynamic design elements, like changing color saturation for visual stimuli and stereo panning for audio stimuli, might have on consumers. Five studies demonstrate that exposure to subtle, dynamic design elements bolsters evaluations in subsequent rating tasks (e.g., product liking, willingness to pay, prosocial concern). Effects obtain for subjective ratings that permit personal opinion but do not obtain for objective ratings for which definitive answers exist. Evidence for the proposed underlying process—state-level arousal—is provided, and a boundary condition is shown to exist via annoyance: dynamism that is both arousing and annoying can lead to a net negative effect for evaluations.