Interactivity and Persuasion

The recent arrival of interactive messaging/marketing units (IMUs) begs the question: Does interacting with an advertisement enhance its persuasive appeal? How does interactivity compare with other structural features of online ads such as animation and ad shape? A 3 (Interactivity: Low, Medium, High) × 2 (Animation: Animated, Static) × 2 (Ad Shape: Banner, Square) fully-crossed factorial within-participants experiment was conducted to explore these questions. All participants (N = 48) were exposed to 12 news-article Web pages, with one ad in each of them. Results show not only that the level of interactivity is positively associated with ad and product attitudes, but also that it interacts with animation and ad shape in complex ways to influence the persuasion process.