The Role of Emotions and Perceived Ad Effectiveness: Evidence From the Truth FinishIt Campaign.

Purpose: Examine association between emotional valence and intensity prompted by anti-tobacco advertising messages and perceived ad effectiveness among youth/young adults.

Design: Online forced-exposure survey data from a nationally weighted, cross-sectional sample of youth/young adults, collected periodically over a 4-year period.

Setting: National.

Participants: Thirty-seven cross-sectional surveys conducted online from June 2015 to January 2018; total N = 9534. All participants, aged 15 to 21, were in the intervention; no control group.

Intervention: Individuals participating in premarket testing of truth ads were forced exposed to one of 37 anti-tobacco ads.

Measures: Emotional response, emotional intensity, and perceived ad effectiveness. Emotional response has been previously studied and measured. Including the discrete measure of "concerned" in positive emotions is unique to our study. It patterned with the other positive emotions when each ad was examined by each emotion. Intensity as measured in this study through the 5-point scale ("how much does this ad make you feel") is unique in the anti-tobacco ad literature. Although several past studies ranked the degree of emotion elicited by ads, they have not incorporated the intensity of emotion as reported by the participant themselves. The scale was used to determine whether perceived ad effectiveness is similar to those used in previous studies.

Analysis: Linear regressions were estimated to assess type of emotional sentiment and level of intensity in relation to perceived effectiveness of the message.

Results: All 9534 participants were exposed; no control group. The βs indicate how strongly the emotion variable influences the study outcome of perceived ad effectiveness. Positive emotions (β = .76) were more highly associated with perceived ad effectiveness (β = .06). Higher intensity with positive emotional sentiment and high-intensity negative produced the highest scores for perceived ad effectiveness (β = .30).

Conclusion: Eliciting a positive, high-impact emotional response from viewers can help improve perceived effectiveness, and in turn, overall ad effectiveness.