Managing the power of curiosity for effective Web advertising strategies.

A primary challenge in creating effective advertising is to ensure that the advertisement not only attracts the target consumer's attention, but also generates interest and educates the consumer about product benefits and positioning (cf. Aaker, Batra, and Myers 1992). Various suggestions have been made previously to achieve these objectives (e.g., teaser headlines, Fazio, Herr, and Powell 1992; repetition of message, Mayard 1995; provision of detailed information, Olson 1983). However, most of these suggestions are tactical in nature and applicable to an individual advertisement but do not speak to the strategic development of an entire campaign.

The challenges of generating interest and educating consumers become especially relevant in the domain of Internet advertising. Unlike a television commercial or print advertisement, most Internet advertising is in a form (e.g., banners, buttons) that requires sufficient interest and motivation on the part of the consumers to interact with the advertisement and access appropriate information rather than be passive recipients of the message (Hanson 2000; Kirsner 1997; Ries and Ries 2000). Consequently, Web advertisers are concerned that they have limited, if any, control over the exposure of the content of the advertising and, hence, the education of consumers (Briggs and Hollis 1997; Maddox 2001). Whereas some advertisers and managers believe that Internet ads have a role in creating brand awareness and image (Frankel 2000), many others have questioned the effectiveness of Internet advertising and argued that advertising off the Internet will always be bigger than advertising on the Internet (Ries and Ries 20 00; see McKillen 2001 for a discussion). These fears are consistent with very low "click-through" rates that are registered for most Internet advertising (Hanson 2000).

The Internet as a communication medium is uniquely different from other media on several dimensions, such as interactivity, control, dynamic content, and depth of content accessible to the consumer (Hoffman and Novak 1996). Researchers have recently proposed that consumer behavior in this medium is greatly shaped by consumers' holistic experiences with this new medium. These researchers have proposed different constructs, such as the state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1990; Hoffman and Novak 1996) and cognitive absorption (Agarwal and Karahanna 2000), to capture the unique dimensions of holistic experiences in technology-based interactions. A common thread underlying these different constructs is the suggestion that consumer experiences in a medium such as the Internet may often be characterized by a state of deep attention, engagement, and fun, such that "nothing else seems to matter" (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, p. 4). This perspective points to both the challenge and the opportunity for those seeking to advertise on the Internet. It explains why advertisers find it difficult to divert the attention of persons who are deeply engrossed in other activities, either experiential (e.g., net surfing) or goal-directed (e.g., on-line shopping; Hoffman and Novak 1996). It also suggests that, if appropriately designed using a suitable "creative hook," Internet advertisements would be able to leverage the same optimal experience of flow or cognitive absorption that the medium is capable of delivering to consumers.