Advertising Engagement: A Driver of Message Involvement on Message Effects

ABSTRACT Engagement plays a contingent role in the effectiveness of advertising processing that corresponds to the message effects created during the process. Such message effects are advertising recall, message involvement, message believability, attitude toward the message (AM), and attitude toward the advertisement (AAD). This study9s objective is to examine whether higher engagement initiated by contextual relevance increases advertising recall, message involvement, message believability, AM, and AAD. The results have revealed that higher engagement increases advertising recall, message involvement, message believability, AM, and AAD. Moreover, message involvement mediates the engagement effect on message believability, whereas AM mediates message believability on AAD. Implications based on the findings demonstrate the importance of engagement as a driver of message involvement and a metric for advertising effectiveness.