On the information content of advertising

Abstract

The relative information value of direct response to that of “general” advertising was assessed through a content analysis of 8,457 full-page magazine advertisements. Resnik and Stern's 14-item information scale (22) was used to determine the amount and type of information in the magazine ads analyzed. The results indicate that 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 the “general” ads. Additionally, a significantly higher proportion of direct response ads exhibited 8 out of 14 of the information cues measured. Overall, the direct response ads analyzed outperformed the “general” ads in amount of and most types of information studied.