An Information Content Comparison of Magazine Ads across a Response Continuum from Direct Response to Institutional Advertising

Abstract Resnik and Stern's (1977) fourteen-item information scale was used to compare the relative information value of direct response, product/store image, and institutional ads contained in eighteen magazines. Content analysis of 8,470 ads revealed that direct response ads tend to differ significantly from both product/store image and institutional ads in terms of the number of information cues they contained as well as the kinds of information conveyed. Specifically, as one moves from lower levels of information content to higher levels, the proportion of direct response ads shifts from significantly smaller to significantly larger proportions when compared to both product/store image and institutional ads. Further, direct response ads were found to be more likely to exhibit nine of the fourteen kinds of information cues examined.