There was a time when business owners and marketers did not consider the effect of advertising on consumers’ behavior. But today, knowing people’s behavior after seeing an ad helps businesses understand more about their consumers. This way, they can create more optimized and relevant ads to trigger consumers to buy or interact with their brand, services, or products.
This is why understanding the effect of advertising is an important factor in planning advertising strategies. In this article, Zigma8 will walk you through the impact of online ads on consumer behavior.
What Is Consumer Behavior?
To fully relate to the subject, let us give you a clear description of what consumer behavior is. In marketing and advertising, consumer behavior is how people engage with a brand while buying or conducting the buying action. It is noteworthy that various consumer demographics will react differently to ads. Still, the behavior towards the brand will be more or less the same. This is mainly dependent on the messaging, format and branding strategy a business uses in its ads. For all that, understanding and analyzing consumer behavior is crucial. Knowing their behavior directs brands to create engaging ads.
How Online Advertising Affects Consumer Behavior?
Advertisements are designed to create an impact on consumers as they present a product or service. Here are some of the consumers’ feelings or actions after seeing an ad.
1. Ads Can Entertain
Yes, the primary goal of ads is to inform the public about a brand, a product or a service. But they can also be entertaining depending on the creativity and cleverness mixed with them. Creative ads get people hooked on what is out there. Once an ad is combined with great feelings creatively, people can not recognize they are being exposed to advertising directly. Some ads go viral only for being entertaining while advertising. Amusing ads will be shared all over the network. Therefore, when done right, ads will create a feeling of entertainment despite consumers knowing that the brand is merely promoting itself.
2. Ads Can Create Familiarity
Continuous exposure through ads will make people feel familiar with a brand. Most people recognize a product or service from the ad they have seen. Unknown and existing brands can benefit from putting their ads out there. Once people see an ad, they will associate it with a brand. If the ad is catchy enough, it will be able to create a spark and trigger their curiosity about the products or services. The search engine company Google made a test with Ipsos MediaCT to collect data about brand awareness. The reports stated that online search ads created an average 80% increase in top-of-mind awareness for businesses using them.
3. Ads Can Define Benefits
Online Advertising can benefit complicated products or services that are new to the market by explaining and pointing out the benefits of what they are offering. Online advertising will translate how a product or service will benefit the target audience. Informational ads can make it easy for consumers to figure out how a service or product will solve their problems.
4. Ads Can Motivate Them to Buy
Advertisements are designed to persuade people to buy a product or use a service. These are precious investments for businesses to spark the interest of potential; consumers to immediately act on them.
Businesses use limited promotions, including discounts or sales, to enhance people’s interest in buying what they are trying to offer. They want to motivate them to take advantage of the limited availability time and buy a service or product for a lesser price. Indicating the features and benefits of a service or product will entice consumers to feel ready to see if they are worth trying. Statista published a report on consumers’ behavior after seeing an ad through which about 44% of consumers purchased a product after seeing an online ad.
5. Ads Can Build Trust
Advertising can persuade people to try a product or service. It can create confidence that a product, for instance, can solve the pain points. Many new products that have yet to prove their efficiency use advertising to establish trust among buyers. In a popular way, advertisements use consumer testimonials to build a solid state of trust in a brand and its offerings. Testimonial ads can convince consumers about the effectiveness of a product or service. Nielsen surveyed global consumers and reported that 66% trust advertisements from consumer reviews.
6. Ads Can Affect Mood
People can have various reactions to ads in different situations, messages, formats, or mediums. An ad can affect consumers negatively or positively depending on the emotions on display. Ads combined with witty comments, humor, and light-hearted presentation will make consumers feel positive about the offered products or services. But some ads, including sensitive issues, political comments, racism, and dark humor can have a negative impact. This means people will quickly connect their emotions and opinion with the brand displaying the ad. A study by the University of Southern California reported that 31% of online ad campaigns with emotional messages performed well. This data cited the emotion of likability of an ad as the main factor in increasing sales.
So far, we have explored the effect of online advertising on consumer behavior. While ads are a great way to expose a brand and promote it, there is also a slight risk of negatively affecting consumers. This is more likely to happen in online mediums since people continuously see ads that they might not be interested in. There is also a term named “Banner Blindness”, which indicates when users ignore ads on the internet. In a survey managed by Goo Technologies containing 2000 consumers, it was revealed that online ads could be ignored by 82%, which can be drastically terrifying data.
This is why every business needs to be mindful of how it will create ads. It helps to consult with experts and contact a reputed local advertising agency like Zigma8, which always passes national and international advertising campaigns with flying colors. We will help you implement a successful ad campaign and match consumer behavior with how you want them to feel or respond to your advertisements. Get in touch.
