Summary Thin Slice Impressions (Elsen, Pieters, Wedel)

Thin Slice Impressions: How Advertsinn Evaluaton Depends on Exposure
Elsen, Pieters & Wedel

The product and brand that are being promoted are the basic identtt of an ad. Long exposure
duratons are required for the consumer to process the details of the ad’s message, establishing the
ad’s basic identtt generallt proceeds more quicklt. Knowing an ad’s identtt helps customers
determine whether the ad is personallt relevant.

Three ttpes of ad identicaton ttpes:
 Upfront ads: ttpical ads for the categort
that thet advertse, similar to other ads
in the same categort. Thet immediatelt
convet their identtt. Congruent with
strong pre-existng schemas that
customer have about the ads in the
categort;
 Mystery ads: attpical for the categort
that thet advertse, dissimilar from other
ads in the same categort but also
dissimilar from ads in other categories.
Thet contain indirect or delated signals
of their true identtt. This prevents
customers from immediatelt matching
the ad with pre-existng ad schemas;
 False front ads: attpical for the categort
that thet advertse in that thet are
similar to ads in a diferent categort than
their own. Hidden behind the ‘front’ of
another categort. Consumers have to make a ‘schema switch’.

Subjectve knowinn: people experience
a feeling of knowing the identtt of the
stmulus when the evidence crosses a
threshold. This is calibrated when the
feeling of knowing is accurate.

Afer brief exposures, the feeling and
accuract of knowing the true identtt of
upfront ads is alreadt high. Afer an
exposure of 100 milliseconds, the
identtt of ttpical ads is known with a
high degree of accuract. We predict that
subjectve knowledge about the identtt
of upfront ads is high and calibrated,
afer both brief and longer exposures.
Afer brief exposures, the feeling and accuract of knowing the true identtt of mtstert ads is low.
Longer exposure duratons improve the feeling and accuract of knowing the identtt. We predict that
subjectve knowledge about the identtt of mtstert ads is calibrated but low afer brief exposures,
and calibrated and high afer long exposures.

, Subjectve knowledge is initallt miscalibrated for false front ads. The feeling of knowing the identtt
of false front ads should be high but inaccurate afer brief exposures. Afer longer exposures, the
inital identtt is revealed to be false, and subjectve knowledge becomes calibrated.

There are two reasonings about the implicatons of diferent ads on ad evaluaton:
 Upfront ads are evaluated less positvelt than mtstert and false front ads. Upfront ads are
ttpical and similar to other ads and less likelt to be sources of pleasure;
 Upfront and false front ads are evaluated more positvelt. People like certaintt and dislike
uncertaintt. The feeling of knowing an upfront ads identtt provides certaintt and this
contributes to more positve evaluaton.

Hypothesis 1: the evaluaton of upfront ads remains mostlt at the inital high level, although we do
not rule out that it might eventuallt fall afer vert long exposure.

Hypothesis 2: the evaluaton of mtstert ads improves afer longer exposures, eventuallt reaching
and perhaps exceeding the evaluaton of upfront ads because people like the resultng “Aha!”
experience when thet discover the identtt of an ad.

Hypothesis 3: the evaluaton of false front ads declines from its initallt high level afer longer
exposure duratons because people dislike disconirmaton of expectatons and schema switching.




Experiment 1
Method
Each partcipant saw 24 ads (2 diferent ads for four product categories for each of the three ad
identicaton ttpes). An ad was shown for a duraton (100 millisec, 2 sec, , sec and 3 0 sec) depending
on the exposure conditon. Afer that, a visual mask appeared for 80 milliseconds to prevent further
visual processing. Partcipants evaluated the ad.