Ad Creativity via Augmented Reality Technology in Online Video Ads: the Differential Role of Novelty, Message Usefulness, and Ad-Consumer Association

This study aims to examine the role of ad creativity in YouTube video ads featuring augmented reality (AR) technology. Through an online experiment, we compared people who hold positive preexisting attitudes toward a familiar brand, people who hold negative preexisting attitudes toward a familiar brand, and people who are unfamiliar with a brand in terms of their perceived creativity of a video ad featuring AR technology. Further, we explored the differential effect of three dimensions of ad creativity, namely, message usefulness, ad novelty, and ad-consumer association, on short and long-term brand name recall, short and long-term brand message recall, ad attitudes, and brand attitudes. Results demonstrated that for a familiar brand, people’s perceived creativity of an ad is biased by their preexisting brand attitudes. For an unfamiliar brand, since people do not hold preexisting attitudes toward it, their perceived creativity of an ad for the unfamiliar brand is mostly shaped by their ad evaluations. Moreover, results revealed that the three dimension of ad creativity play different roles in ad effectiveness.