Consumer Memory for Television Advertising: A Field Study of Duration, Serial Position, and Competition Effects

We simultaneously analyze the impact on consumer memory of the duration and serial position of a commercial and of the number of competing commercials in a block using a marketplace database of 2,677 television commercials. Our results indicate that duration, competition, and the time lag until the onset of a commercial in a block have large effect sizes, while primacy and recency have only modest effect sizes. By decomposing serial position into its ordinal and time-lag aspects, this study shows that recency effects are masked by the time until the onset of a commercial in a block. The findings suggest that, given comparable costs and a goal to maximize brand recall, placing a commercial first is better than placing it last. In addition, the analyses identify several significant and previously undocumented interactions.