Enhancing Memory of Television Commercials through Message Spacing

Though advertising repetition is a frequently used marketing strategy, its effects are not well understood. The authors report findings from a laboratory experiment in which they investigated the effects of repeating a television commercial as a function of varying the message spacing or lag (i.e., the number of intervening commercials between two presentations of the target commercial) and the delay in memory measurement. In two different samples—younger and older adults—the results show a lag by measurement delay interaction. In general, results show that in the long measurement delay condition, the recall of message contents was significantly higher with the long lag than with the short lag. However, in the short measurement delay condition, recall was significantly higher with the short lag than with the long lag. The results are explained by a variation of encoding variability theory. The implications of the findings for media planning and television advertising to older adults are discussed.