Media Formats of Advertising

Advertising, disseminated through media, undergoes continual transformation with evolving media technologies over time. We present a model to shed light on this evolution, elucidating the role of media format in advertising. The model features media’s steering of consumer attention over time. Consumers can decide where to direct their attention, given the media’s allocation of advertising and media content. Media technologies can constrain the allocation capability, resulting in three distinct advertising formats: static, sequential, and interactive. We analyze how different formats grapple with two fundamental problems in media advertising: incentive misalignment between consumers and media, and media’s limited ability to observe consumer ad processing. We illustrate how the interactive format strikes a balance between two extremes of attention control. For highly informative ads, the interactive medium can grant consumers full control over their attention, akin to the static format. Conversely, for moderately informative ads, it is optimal for the medium to tighten up the control just like the sequential format. These insights have broad implications for media design of advertising formats, advertiser selection of media, and the externalities of media advertising on consumers.

History: Anthony Dukes served as the senior editor for this article.