Media Transportation and Advertising

Advertising is commonly presented in the context of media articles or programs that are intended to engage the consumer. An important aspect of this engagement is media transportation, where a person not only attends to information but also is absorbed into the narrative flow of a story in a pleasurable and active way. This research examines the effects of the transportation experience produced by the media context on the impact of ads that appear in that context. Three studies show that transportation can have both positive and negative effects on advertising. Intrusion of the ad into the transportation process is shown to mediate the negative effects, which occurs independently of involvement. There are many theoretical reasons to expect that consumer reactions to advertising are affected by their response to the program or print material in which the advertising is inserted. Indeed many studies have looked at the impact of media context on the effectiveness of advertising. At present, however, two major issues arise with this