Robert Meeds on Information Processing of Internet Advertisements

By: Zach Juarez, Gerardo Colon & Rene Trujillo Jr.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Robert Meeds for our scholar interview.

Meeds is a professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton, teaching areas are in advertising and integrated marketing communications. His research explores how changes in the ways advertising copywriting affects what consumers notice, learn, think, and feel. His research articles are published in academic journals such as the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Newspaper Research Journal, Journal of Middle East Media, and others. Prior to joining Academia, Meeds worked as a graphic designer and newspaper advertising director.

To gain feedback and insight into research methods, we interviewed him about his research on factors affecting the information processing of internet advertisements. Our blog post summarizes our interview with the professor.

The interview began with asking Professor Meeds how the research process was executed during his study and what factors were being measured that affected information processing. As well as what methods were used and if they were qualitative or quantitative.

Meeds started by detailing that for this study, the research had to be very quantitative; specifically, it had to have an experimental design. Commenting that he’s done a large amount of quantitative research and that within this style of research the primary methods are surveys and experiments. Within mass media research most of the experiments are largely informed by psychological experiment traditions, dealing with behavioral and attitudinal factors, which is Meed’s main focus of research. 

This specific study was published in 2007, meaning research was being done in 2006, when the internet was seen as a new frontier. The research was being done around the same time the Internet Advertising Bureau was being formed, so there were no restrictions on Internet advertising at the time.

The focus of the study was popup advertising, where the technology was at the time, and the lack of regulation was perceived to be incredibly annoying. At this point, pop-up ads were increasingly difficult to close without having an “X” to close the ad; notably, they would move around the screen, dodging efforts to close it. These difficulties would lead to users accidentally clicking the ads and opening a new website. Combined with how the internet was much slower at the time, these ads were perceived as significantly annoying.

A specific type of ad that Meeds mentioned was an interstitial ad, meaning a gap ad. When someone clicks on a site and, while that site is loading, ads will pop up on the screen in a “lobby site,” which led users to believe the site was loading slower with an already slow internet connection. These ads would have a captive audience, thus, people were getting increasingly annoyed at advertisements in general. Meeds comments that people have adapted to it now, and advertisers have wised up to the fact that it’s not profitable to annoy potential consumers just to get their attention.

He mentioned the Internet Advertising Bureau, which has produced industry-wide standards that have changed the form of advertising online to being less annoying than what it was in the past. He conducted this study to find out what effects made it worse or better at the time.

The interview continued by asking Meeds what sentiment he had by the end of the study regarding what would be a better form of advertising between the two he studied: banner advertising or pop-up advertising?

Meeds commented that a banner ad engendered a better attitude than pop-up advertising, and that sentiment has been consistent from the time the study was done until now. That was one of the study’s hypotheses that was supported by the research done, commenting that banner ads exist in the field of view but do not force a user to interact with it, making it less intrusive. Banner ads have to be more interesting and not force a user to interact with it which has a better effect on how they are perceived.

Then, we asked Professor Meeds to detail what they were referring to when they used the terms high-reactant and low-reactant individuals when referencing their consumers.

He described reactance theory, which explains a personality trait where people feel irritated when their freedom of choice is restricted. This irritation, known as psychological reactance, differs among individuals: some react strongly, while others are less affected. They measured participants’ levels of psychological reactance through a pretest questionnaire and then categorized them as high or low. This allowed them to examine if participants’ reaction levels influenced their responses to the various types and frequencies of advertisements.

We continued by asking Professor Meeds about a comment made before the interview referring to the study as outdated. He comments that the interview was from 2007, and pop-up ads are basically extinct now. Then, off a follow-up question asking what form of internet advertising would be comparable in annoyance to pop-up ads, Meeds brought up ads that are prevalent in phone games where one would have to sit through an ad to even begin playing or badly placed ads where a user would be exposed to the ad repeatedly.

We also asked if he was to do this study today, what type of advertisements would he focus on in the place of banner and pop-up ads?

He answered the type of advertisements that appear in the middle of an article or web page, cutting into the content, ones that aren’t able to be closed so they stay on the screen until the user scrolls past until they run into another one 

Going back to the research methods of Meed’s original study, he detailed what they were measuring and how they were able to measure it. He explained that they performed a lot of eye-tracking research, which is very stimulus-driven. He details that there is a difference between what a reader can decide to acknowledge in an ad but also what they were focusing on without consciously deciding to. That this was up to the stimulus and how it’s designed to attract the eye.

He also added in about measuring people’s emotional responses to advertising, which became much more psycho-physiological. Which entails measuring things that the consumer wasn’t aware of or could not even verbalize like eye twitches, facial twitches, muscle movement, brainwaves, cardiac orienting response, and skin conductance. Then using that information to see how it could capture emotional changes that one would not be normally aware of.

The last question was about the study’s two-by-two-by-three factorial design. A factorial design used three levels for ad repetition, two levels for the type of ad being shown, pop-up or banner, and two more levels showing reactance levels, high or low reactant individuals.

This factorial design resulted in 12 treatment conditions, which split all the participants in one of these conditions. First, the participant was divided by their reactance level. Then, they were randomly assigned one of two conditions at each level. The process was then repeated for each participant, and the structure helped maintain statistical power by ensuring that groups were comparable across conditions.

In conclusion...

Our interview with Meeds, was very informative in helping us understand the psychological attitudes of different forms of advertising. His insights highlighted the evolution of digital advertising toward more user-friendly, effective approaches. Lastly, he also advised on our own study of social media’s impact on perceived productivity, spotlighting the importance of carefully measuring complex variables.