Narrative ads: The effect of argument strength and story format

Narrative advertising conveys the core message by telling a story. The present study investigates the persuasion effects and mediation process for narrative ads, as well as how the presentation format of the story (verbal versus visual) may influence consumers' information processing. The results show that argument strength has a positive effect on attitudes when the ad does not contain a narrative story but the effect diminishes for narrative ads. Transportation mediates the impact of narrative ads on ad attitude and product evaluation when the story presentation is verbal rather than visual. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.