ABSTRACT
Getting attention with advertising has been a focus of industry and academic research for decades. After all, if no one sees your message, can it have an impact? People are inundated with stimuli at any given moment in their daily lives. It is believed that we cannot begin to process all we encounter, so we must actively select what we pay attention to. Theoretically, this is called selective perception, and the first step in basic perception models is selection of the particular stimuli (such as an ad) to which we will give attention at that moment. There are many reasons you may pay attention to advertising. You may pay attention to an ad because it is novel, irritating, funny, loud, quiet, shocking, the model is attractive or familiar, you’re bored, you find the ad relevant to something on your mind at that time, etc. There are various theoretical concepts that explore these motives for individuals selecting advertising as a stimulus of interest. Such concepts are often related to important advertising outcomes (e.g., what role does ad likeability play in regard to purchase intention?). One of the earlier concepts formulated to explain why individuals may pay attention to advertising is the notion of involvement. If you venture into the office of major U.S. advertising agencies or read Ad Age over the years, you’ll find industry people speaking of ideas such as “relevance” and “engagement.” The terms change from year to year as agencies attempt to differentiate their philosophy from that of other agencies, but the basic ideas remain the same. At the core of terms like “relevance” and “engagement” is the fundamental idea of involvement.
