Web commercials and advertising hierarchy-of-effects

Websites are becoming increasingly complex due to the competing sights and sounds found on each page. Prior research by the authors (Stevenson, Bruner,and Kumar, 2000) has demonstrated the negative consequences that this sort of complexity can have on the effectiveness of a commercial run on such a page. Generalizations of those findings were limited due to the study's student sample so the experiment was replicated using a nonstudent adult sample. In addition, the present experiment included constructs not part of the previous study and allowed for the development and testing of a more elaborate model. Web experience was found to play an important role along with webpage complexity and interestingness on attitude-toward-the-website, which in turn had significant effects on the web advertising hierarchy-of-effects.