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Perception of humour banner advertising: A conceptual framework

Article  in  International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising · January 2014

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2014.066844

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Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2014 181

Perception of humour banner advertising:

a conceptual framework

Igor Makienko
Department of Managerial Sciences,
College of Business,
University of Nevada Reno,
0028, Reno, Nevada, 89557, USA
Email: imakienko@unr.edu

Abstract: Online advertising has become a very popular and cost effective
communication tool for marketers. However, humour banner advertising has
never received attention from the researchers. We develop a conceptual
framework of how consumers perceive humour banner advertising. When
online consumers are not actively looking for a product and exposed to banners
involuntarily, they try to minimise their cognitive efforts and process peripheral
cues of the advertising message rather than the message content. Thus, they
form preliminary attitudes toward the banner and the advertised brand based on
the favourability of peripheral cues. As humour represents a strong executional
cue and is the perfect attention-grabbing tool with a low-involved audience, in
general, humour banner advertising is likely to be more effective in an online
environment than non-humour banner advertising. We also discuss how content
relevance between an advertised brand and the website, an individual’s need
for cognition and the type of consumer online behaviour moderate the
effectiveness of humour banner advertising. An extensive literature review is
used to identify the research findings that support our conceptual framework.

Keywords: internet advertising; humour banner advertising; consumer

involvement; click-through rate; advertising effectiveness; brand attitude;
intention to click; need for cognition; content relevance; type of online
behaviour.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Makienko, I. (2014)

‘Perception of humour banner advertising: a conceptual framework’,
Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp.181–198.

Biographical notes: Igor Makienko holds Masters’ degrees in Mechanical

Engineering (Moscow Aviation Institute), Journalism (Moscow State
University), International Economics (Russian Academy of Foreign Trade),
Mass Communication (Louisiana State University) and a PhD in Business
Administration (Louisiana State University). He has extensive experience
in advertising and marketing. His research has been published in the Journal
of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Promotion Management, Journal of
Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, Marketing Education
Review, International Journal of Management Education, American Journal of
Business Education, Journal of Food Products Marketing and Journal of Food
Distribution Research and presented at numerous international conferences.

Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

182 I. Makienko

1 Introduction

The web has become a revolutionary advertising tool, providing marketers with new
opportunities to reach potential consumers. According to eMarketer.com (2013),
spending on online advertising in the USA, which grew by 14% to $42.5 billion in 2013,
and it is expected to rise by an additional 12.4% to $47.77 billion in 2014. However, it is
not yet clear how the unique features of the web influence consumer perceptions of
online advertising and whether traditional mass media approaches can be successfully
applied to the web environment (cf. Chang-Hoan and Khang, 2006). According to
Hoffman and Novak (1996), the web represents an important and different environment.
As online banner advertising is a part of this environment, it warrants closer attention
from researchers.
The goal of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of humour appeal in online
banner advertising, develop a theoretical framework of how consumers perceive humour
banner advertising and equip marketing managers with a better understanding of how to
use this advertising tool. The importance of the topic lies in the fact that banners are a
very popular online advertising format; however, the use of humour appeal in banners has
never been investigated. In light of the gradual decrease of click-through rates of banners
in recent years, humour appeal may be a crucial element in enhancing the effectiveness of
banner advertising. According to Wang et al. (2013, p.122), “identifying the critical
elements that influence attention and attitude towards banner ads is an important issue for
scholars and practitioners”. We adopted conceptual research as the way to develop our
framework and to show directions for future research. The main research method
was literature review, as well as identification of current gaps in literature and the
development of a conceptual framework.
Our proposition combines the findings from two streams of research – research on
banner advertising and that on humour in advertising. In most cases, online consumers
are exposed to banner advertising involuntarily. Such a situation is similar to the
traditional advertising context in that it has a low level of audience involvement
(Cho, 1999). Uninvolved individuals try to minimise their cognitive efforts by focusing
on the executional aspects (peripheral cues) of advertising rather than on processing the
central message claims (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983). Peripheral cues may include the
attractiveness of a source, music, humour, as well as other ‘non-central’ elements. When
used in advertising, humour represents a strong executional element and thus it is often
used to capture audience attention.
As a result of involuntary advertising exposure, consumers may form preliminary
attitudes toward banner advertising and the advertised brand based on the favourability of
the peripheral cues of the advertising (Cho, 1999). In addition humour banners may enjoy
higher click-through rates than banners using other types of appeals. One of the main
features of humour is that it works better in low-involvement situations to perfectly
match those situations where consumers are involuntarily exposed to banners. As a result,
attention-grabbing humour elements in banners are likely to have higher chances of being
noticed and clicked on. While it has been suggested that, in general, humour banner
advertising is more effective than non-humour banner advertising, this effect is likely to
be moderated by other factors. Previous research has shown that the perception of
advertising depends on the relevance between an advertised product and the ‘editorial’
content, such as where the ad is placed (Manchanda et al., 2004), the type of online
 Perception of humour banner advertising 183

behaviour (Chang-Hoan and Cheon, 2004) and the individual’s need for cognition (Cline
et al., 2003).
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. First, we review literature on the
effect of humour appeal in traditional advertising. Then, we present research findings on
banner advertising. Next, we develop a conceptual framework, which integrates both
streams of research, and discuss how additional factors may moderate the main effect of
humour banner on consumer attitude towards the banner, the advertised brand and the
intention to click on the banner. Finally, we discuss the advantages and limitations of
using humour appeal in banner advertising.

2 Humour in advertising

The value of entertainment lies in the ability to satisfy consumer needs for escapism,
diversion, aesthetic enjoyment or emotional release (McQual, 1983; Spotts et al., 1997).
The entertainment role of media has been reported by multiple researchers (Calfee and
Ringold, 1994; Gulas and Weinberger, 2006; Pollay and Mittal, 1993; Shavitt and
Lawrey, 1998; Zhang and Zinkhan, 2006). For example, given that advertising is a
significant part of media content, the entertainment value of advertising can considerably
enhance its effectiveness (Ducoffe, 1996). Humour has been widely employed as an
executional element of advertising to generate affective responses such as liking
(Zhang, 1996), and it may transfer to the advertised product the good feeling induced by
advertising (Eisend, 2009). The entertainment aspect of advertising can further lead to
increased trust in advertisers and their products while weakening the negative perceptions
of preponderance and the invasiveness of advertising. A recent meta-analysis by
Eisend (2009) has indicated that humour appeal improves attitudes toward the
advertisement and attitudes toward the brand.
Between 10% and 30% of all advertising in the USA is intended to be humorous
(Krishnan and Chakravarthi, 2003; Spotts et al., 1997; Weinberger et al., 1995), and
every fifth television ads contains humorous appeals (Beard, 2005). According to
van Kuilenburg et al. (2011) the public likes humorous advertising and appreciates it.
Even though modern technology allows consumers to skip television commercials,
commercials with humour appeal get the most attention. The frequent use of humour in
advertising is a notable communication strategy (Shabbir and Thwaites, 2007) that may
be effective at inducing persuasion. However, considerable research on humour appeal in
advertising has not provided systematic findings on the superiority of humorous
advertising (Alden and Hoyer, 1993; Alden et al., 2000; Chattopadhyay and Basu, 1990;
Cline et al., 2003; Duncan and Nelson, 1985; Gelb and Zinkhan, 1986; Krishnan and
Chakravarti, 2003; Lee and Mason, 1999; Spotts et al., 1997; Weinberger and Campbell,
1990–1991; Woltman et al., 2004). It has been found that humour is limited in its ability
to increase comprehension and persuasion, perhaps because humorous ads are more
ambiguous and open to idiosyncratic interpretation than other ads (Flaherty et al., 2004;
Hershkowitz, 1977; van Kuilenburg et al., 2011). If consumers are unable to resolve the
humorous ‘puzzle’, they may experience irritation and have a negative perception of the
advertising, the advertised brand and the advertiser. By contrast, when consumers
perceive the humorous ‘puzzle’ to be too simple (or too close to non-humorous
advertising) to induce their interest, they may not pay attention to the humorous cues and,
184 I. Makienko

consequently, to the advertising. Another problem with the use of humour in advertising
is that it may hurt the feelings of certain groups of people (Ford and Ferguson, 2004). In
some situations, humour is simply inappropriate. For example, products with which
people are involved and which carry emotional attachments may not be suitable for
humorous advertising (Gulas and Weinberger, 2006). In addition, Weinberger and Spotts
(1989) report that the majority of advertising executives consider it to be inappropriate to
use humour in corporate ads. The use of humour may also be perceived as the lack of
ability to make a serious argument, which is likely to impair the persuasion element of
the communication effort (Bryant et al., 1981). According to Sutherland and Sylvester
(2000), humour remains a difficult-to-understand element of advertising, as it is a
multidimensional construct that does not produce consistent communication effects.
Conflicting findings have made researchers abandon the question of whether humour
enhances ad effectiveness and focus instead on the question of when humour is effective
(Chattopadhyay and Basu, 1990; Weinberger and Spotts, 1989; Zhang and Zinkhan,
2006).
The most consistent finding across many studies is that humour is successful in
attracting attention (Duncan and Nelson, 1985; Eisend, 2009; Hansen et al., 2009;
Kellaris et al., 1993; Lee and Mason, 1999; Madden and Weinberger, 1982; Sternthal and
Creig, 1973; Weinberger and Gulas, 1992). According to Cline and Kellaris (2007),
humour enhances attention, but does not affect consumer cognitive responses. Humorous
elements in advertising capture attention by promising a hedonic reward. They serve as
cues that allow consumers to expect an entertaining experience without much expenditure
of time and effort (Stern, 1994). Humour has also been found to be more effective in
low-involvement situations than in high-involvement situations (Zhang and Zinkhan,
2006; Voss, 2009; Weinberger and Campbell, 1990–1991). Involvement is usually
defined as the extent to which a stimulus or task is relevant to the consumer’s existing
needs and values (MacInnis and Jaworski, 1989; Petty et al., 1983). The elaboration
likelihood model (Petty et al., 1983) posits that in high-involvement situations consumers
process the central cues of the message (e.g., the arguments’ strengths), whereas in
low-involvement situations they are unwilling or unable to exert substantial cognitive
efforts and thus process peripheral cues (e.g., the attractiveness of the design, music,
humour and other background elements of the message). After the initial exposure to
advertising, consumers either try to interpret its meaning (when the ads are relevant to
consumers) or become interested in the peripheral cues (Yoon and Kim, 2001).
According to Cline and Kellaris (1999), low-involved consumers, when exposed to
humour advertising may form more favourable attitudes toward the ads when it contains
weak arguments than when it has strong arguments. At the same time, with increasing
levels of involvement the humour-induced effect becomes less salient (Zhang and
Zinkhan, 2006). Therefore, humour advertising has definite advantages over non-humour
advertising in grabbing consumer attention in a low-involvement context.

3 Banner advertising

Current online advertising varies from simple non-linked banners to pop-ups and to entire
websites designed to advertise brands or companies. Although there is no universal
taxonomy of online advertising, the two dominant forms are banner advertising and target
advertising (Hoffman et al., 1995). A banner is defined as a “section of online advertising
 Perception of humour banner advertising 185

space that typically consists of a combination of graphic and textual content and contains
an internal link to target ad pages (the advertiser’s information on the host site) or an
external link to the advertiser’s website via a click through URL” [Chatterjee, (2005),
p.51].
Target advertising is an actual website to which a consumer is moved to after clicking
on the banner. Some researchers do not consider target advertising as a ‘real’ type of
advertising and define it as online marketing (Dohmeyer, 1997). Compared with
traditional advertising, online target advertising requires more commitment because a
voluntary action (i.e., clicking on banner advertising or searching for a specific website)
must be performed for active information processing (Cho, 1999). At the same time, not
everything that appears on the screen is a conscious consumer choice.
Although consumers can modify the order of presentation by selecting those links
they want to follow, they do not have absolute control over the advertising messages
placed on websites. While surfing the web, consumers are exposed to some advertising
involuntarily. For example, exposure to banner advertising is an involuntary act that
requires little effort from consumers. Consumers are free to notice banners or not.
Smith (2002) indicates that, in general, involvement with online advertising is low, which
is in accordance with traditional media advertising. Surfing consumers actively skip
webpage, often pausing to be entertained and perhaps missing or deliberately bypassing
content that might be considered by advertisers to be important (Rossiter and Bellman,
1999). Indeed, one of the strongest factors that impede online advertising effectiveness is
online advertising clutter (Chang-Hoan and Cheon, 2004). Because of the low-level of
attention consumers pay to the advertising, many advertising messages cannot be
delivered in full (Bezjian-Avery et al., 1998). These explanations are similar to those
made by Greenwald and Leavitt (1984) when they look at the low-effectiveness of
printed ads. The authors argue that, “with rapid page turning and only partial scanning of
page contents” critical cues could attract more attention and could lead to high-
involvement situations that may simply be missed [Greenwald and Leavitt, (1984),
p.590]. At the same time, online consumers are more ‘conscious’ recipients of advertising
than those exposed to traditional media (Fourquet-Courbet et al., 2007) and they may
even recall banners after a single exposure (Briggs and Hollis, 1997). Since this paper
addresses the effectiveness of humour appeal in the online environment, only banner
advertising, which provides conditions for the superior performance of humour, will be
discussed further.
Banners were introduced in 1994 (Lohita et al., 2003) and they are usually placed on
high-traffic websites (Cho and Leckenby, 1998; Chun-Yao and Lin, 2006; Dou et al.,
2001; Hofacker and Murphy, 1998). According to the Internet Advertising Bureau
(2009), banners continue to be one of the leading advertising formats, accounting for
34% of all online advertising, and spending on standard banners will reach $8.63 billion
in 2014 (eMarketer, 2013).
A banner is usually embedded in the host website to attract traffic to another website
(Thota et al., 2012). Banners are not intrusive for online consumers, as they are generally
displayed on the screen’s periphery (Palanisamy and Wong, 2003). The two primary
goals of banner advertising, namely to increase awareness and to grow traffic to the
linked website (or the click-through rate), refer to two measures of online advertising
effectiveness: ad-views or impressions (involuntary exposures) and click-through rates
(voluntary exposures) (Sundar and Kalyanaram, 2004). Online advertising is often
186 I. Makienko

associated with the click-through rate, which is considered to be a superior measure of

advertising effectiveness (Chandon et al., 2003; Lohita et al., 2003).
However, many researchers believe that evaluating online advertising just on the
click-through rate is similar to evaluating television advertising for automobiles based on
how many people visit a showroom the next day (Bergkvist and Melander, 2000; Dreze
and Hussherr, 2003). The use of the click-through rate as the only measure of
effectiveness may undervalue banners as an advertising medium (Briggs and Hollis,
1997; Dreze and Hussherr, 2003). According to Manchanda et al. (2006), any
‘instantaneous’ metric, such as the click-through rate, may not show the actual long-term
impact of advertising. Even if not clicked, banners can influence consumer attitudes and
help build brand image (Elliott, 1996). Research also provides evidence that banner
advertising may increase brand awareness, stimulate latent brand associations, affect
attitudes toward the brand and even increase purchase intention (Briggs and Hollis, 1997;
ComScore Networks, 2008; Dreze and Hussherr, 2003; Manchanda et al, 2006; Pharr,
2004; Stevenson et al., 2000). However, the attitudes toward the banner and the brand
that consumers may form during involuntary exposures are weak because banner
advertising contains a limited amount of information and, thus, does not fully activate the
cognitive processing of advertising messages needed for attitude change. For banner
advertising, only the motivation to process is important because the ability to process is
not required at this stage (Cho, 1999). Banners serve as a starting point for more detailed
target advertising, and therefore the ‘eye-catching’ capability is vital for this type of
advertising.

4 Humour banner advertising

The modified elaboration likelihood model developed by Cho (1999) for the web
does not differentiate between consumer perceptions of involuntary exposure in
traditional media and in the web environment. Unless consumers click on a banner,
they are not interacting with the target advertising, but are only exposed to the banner
in a traditional manner (Cho, 1999). The goal of advertising is to move consumers from
the pre-attention stage – a minimal response state in which consumer receptors are
physically oriented towards the source of stimulation but not attentive to it – to the
attention stage, when the individual is attentive to the stimulus (Greenwald and
Leavitt, 1984). Banners try to impact consumer cognitions and emotions and guide them
to target websites rather than fully communicate a message in the blur of a rapid
click-through on the way to another site (Rossiter and Bellman, 1999). While
average viewing time of a webpage is only 40 seconds (Filloux, 2009), banners ‘enjoy’
even less attention (Wang et al., 2013). Designers often create very innovative
banners to attract viewer attention (Fourquet-Courbet et al., 2007). They extensively
experiment with elements such as colour, font, image, message and animation as
emerging factors of banner success (Clifford, 2008; Diao and Sundar, 2004;
Krishnamurthy, 2000). Recently, some advertisers started using animated banners that
resulted in higher levels of attention (Yoo and Kim, 2005) and higher click-through rates
(Lohita et al., 2003).
Improving the attention-grabbing capability of banners is a very important task
because almost 43% of consumers usually ignore banner advertising (eMarketer, 2013).
 Perception of humour banner advertising 187

Furthermore, click-through rates for banner advertisements have gradually started

decreasing since 2010 (eMarketer, 2013). Humour may be very effective, but it is an
overlooked tool in improving the efficiency of banners. Since consumers are exposed to
banners involuntarily and are not motivated to be involved in intensive cognitive
processing, they focus on the peripheral cues of advertising. Hence, the humour
banner is likely to gain a greater response than non-humour banner. In addition, humour
appeal has the potential to result in much higher click-through rates. Indeed,
when emotional appeals are used in advertising, click-through rates increase (Lohita
et al., 2003). One more advantage of humour banners is that they contain limited
information about the advertised product and if consumers like the humour they
may have a higher intention to click on the banner in order to see more of the
humorous content. While in general research provides mixed findings, some authors
show that advertising in a low-involvement context is more effective than that of
advertising in a high-involvement context. The reason is that high-involvement contexts
produce a higher level of need for closure and make consumers emotionally more
intense (Gunter and Furnham, 1997; Norris and Colman, 1992; Park and McClung,
1986). The humorous executional elements of advertising also enhances the likeability of
the advertising (Belch and Belch, 1998) and of the advertised brand (Gelb and Pickett,
1983). Chung and Zhao (2011) found that humour elements enhance brand name recall
(regardless of brand name familiarity) and create a favourable attitude towards the
advertisement.
Finally, one more advantage of using humour banners is the web audience, which
tends to be young and well-educated. According to Madden and Weinberger (1984) such
an audience is much more receptive to humour advertising.
Therefore, humour banner advertising will be more effective than non-humour banner
advertising – all else being equal.
In our model we develop propositions about the effect of humour banners on
consumer attitude towards banner advertising, attitude towards advertised brand and
intention to click. We define attitude towards advertising (and banner as a form of online
advertising) as “a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or
unfavorable manner to advertising in general” [Lutz, (1985), p.53]. Attitude towards the
advertised brand represents the overall attitude that is based on brand’s attributes,
perceived quality and superiority (Aaker and Keller, 1990).
Finally, intention to click is defined as consumer desire to click on a banner. To better
understand this construct we provide more established definitions of click-through action
and click-through rate. Click-through action is defined as a voluntarily exposure to the
target website for the purpose of acquiring more detailed information after clicking on a
banner (Cho, 2003). Further, click-through rate represents the percentage of online
consumers who decide to click on a banner to go to a target or destination website
(Yoo, 2009).

Proposition 1 Humour banner advertising will induce a more favourable attitude

towards the banner and the advertised brand, as well as a higher
intention to click than non-humour banner advertising.
188 I. Makienko

5 Humour banner and content fit between advertised product and website
content

There are several perspectives on the relevance construct (or fit). First, it can refer to the
link between execution strategy and advertising goals. Humour (as well as any other
execution strategy) is more effective if it is directly related to and well-integrated with the
objectives and message of the advertising (Krishnan and Chakravarti, 2003; Scott et al.,
1990). For example, consumers may expect humorous elements in Super Bowl ads, but
not in life insurance advertising (Kellaris and Cline, 2007). Irrelevant humour may be
detrimental to advertising effectiveness (Madden and Weinberger, 1982; Speck, 1991;
Weinberger and Campbell, 1991). Another perspective is the fit between the advertised
product and a consumer’s need for it. When consumers are not actively looking for an
advertised product, they may perceive advertising as irrelevant and pay no attention to it.
These aspects of relevance are beyond the scope of our framework and will not be
discussed here. The perspective that we focus on is the topical relevance between the
product being advertised in a banner (appearing on the website) and the website’s
content. In traditional advertising terms, this represents whether the advertised product
fits the ‘editorial’ environment of a website or not. Content relevance in the online
environment may be defined as topical similarity between an advertised product and
the website, where it is placed (Chaiken and Stangor, 1987; Cooper and Croyle, 1987;
Woodside and Singer, 1994).
According to Chaiken and Stangor (1987) identical message may produce different
effects depending on the context of this message. Research on traditional advertising
shows that people evaluate advertising that fits the editorial environment more favourably
because it addresses their particular interests (Aaker and Brown, 1972; Cannon, 1982).
Online consumers also expect some relevance between banner advertising and the
website content to which they choose to be exposed. Shamdasani et al. (2001) suggest
that banner advertising that is relevant to the website content where it is placed will have
a more favourable response than advertising that is irrelevant to the host website.
According to Cho and Cheon (2004), when consumers do not see the fit between the
advertised product and the website content, they avoid looking at such advertising due to
a perceived goal impediment. Research has shown that the banner-website content fit
enhances audience’s attitude towards the brand (Moore et al., 2005). Contextually
relevant to the advertising website content also results in higher purchase intentions
(Jeong and King, 2010), and higher click-through rates, as well as considerable
improvement in the website’s image (Thota et al., 2012).
When the right message is delivered to the right people at the right time, consumers
notice it and are ready to process it in-depth (Chang-Hoan and Cheon, 2004). Consumers
who are exposed voluntarily to a website because of their interest in its content are more
likely to click on the relevant banners. Relevant information elicits more intensive
processing effort (Hastie and Kumar, 1979; Srul, et al., 1985), results in higher recall
(Heckler and Childers, 1992) and more favourable attitudes (Lee and Mason, 1999)
compared with irrelevant information. The use of humour advertising in situations with
high personal relevance has little or no advantage over non-humour advertising. By
contrast, in low-involvement situations where advertising effectiveness is determined by
peripheral cues, humour banners may be more effective (see Figure 1).
 Perception of humour banner advertising 189

Proposition 2 The effect of humour banner advertising will be moderated by the

fit between the advertised product and the website content where
the banner is placed. Humour banner advertising will induce a more
favourable attitude towards the banner and the advertised brand and a
higher intention to click than non-humour banner advertising when there
is no fit between the advertised product and the website content than
where is a fit.

Figure 1 Consumer perception of humour banner advertising

MODERATORS:

- Advertised product-website content fit

- Type of web behaviour
- Need for cognition

Attitude toward
banner

Humour banner Attitude toward

advertising brand

Intention to
click

6 Humour banner and type of web behaviour

There is little agreement about the nature of consumer behaviour on the web. Hoffman
and Novak (1996) define two broad categories of behaviour in the computer-mediated
environment: goal-directed and experiential. Goal-directed behaviour is extrinsically
motivated to achieve valued outcomes and it is more intentional and selective.
Characterised by enduring involvement and the domination of utilitarian benefits, goal-
directed behaviour reflects a clear goal hierarchy (Hoffman and Novak, 1996). By
contrast, experiential behaviour is intrinsically motivated, focusing just on the process of
performing the activity and not on the outcome. Experiential behaviour can be defined as
non-directed search for recreational purposes (Bloch et al., 1986; Hoffman and Novak,
1996). It is a less intentionally time-filling activity (with hedonic benefits) that is guided
by intuition and a continually changing goal hierarchy.
190 I. Makienko

It is reasonable to assume that consumers who engage in goal-directed behaviour

experience a high-level of involvement and pay more attention to the central cues of an
advertising message. Indeed, Danaher and Mullarkey (2003) found that consumers in a
goal-directed mode are much less likely to recall and recognise banners than those in an
experiential mode. In addition, when consumers engage in goal-directed behaviour they
may have limited time to complete all tasks and as a result they try to avoid advertising
messages (Chang-Hoan and Cheon, 2004). In such situations, humour advertising is not
superior to non-humour advertising. However, consumers who display experiential
behaviour are less likely to engage in message-related thinking and may pay more
attention to peripheral cues (including humour). Nowadays, manoeuvring through the
virtual world is easy. The curiosity or expectation of entertainment may drive visitors
who are hedonically experiencing the web (Holbrook and Hirshman, 1982) to see what
sort of product (if there is no clear identification of the product in a banner) is being
advertised or whether the target advertising is also humorous and can provide more
entertainment. A surfing consumer is less motivated to process information and is more
likely to evaluate advertising on the peripheral cues.
Proposition 3 The effect of humour banner advertising will be moderated by
consumers’ web behaviour. Humour banner advertising will induce a
more favourable attitude towards the banner and the advertised brand
and a higher intention to click than non-humour banner advertising when
consumers engage in experiential behaviour than when they engage in
goal-directed behaviour.

7 Humour banner and need for cognition

Need for cognition (NFC) is defined as the intrinsic enjoyment of being engaged in
effortful information processing (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). It is an important individual
characteristic that predicts consumer responses to humorous messages (Lewin, 1951).
High NFC individuals are motivated to process incoming information in more depth
(Cline et al., 2003), whereas low NFC individuals exposed to persuasive messages are
influenced more by the peripheral cues of the message than they are by the central cues
(Cline et al., 2003; Haugtvedt et al., 1992; Haugtvedt and Petty, 1992; Zhang, 1996). For
example, Voss (2009) found that a humorous message makes advertising more persuasive
for low NFC individuals. Therefore, for low NFC individuals, humour banner advertising
is more effective than non-humour banner advertising. The effect of humour may
strengthen if such advertising generates a positive mood. Subjects in a positive mood are
likely to perceive and evaluate stimuli more favourably than when they are in other
moods (Isen and Simmonds, 1978). A positive mood leads to less cognitive elaboration
because people in a positive mood are motivated to maintain their status quo and,
therefore, avoid exerting additional efforts that can only disrupt their positive moods
(Isen and Levin, 1972). A decrease in elaboration, caused by a positive mood, results in
more heuristic, rather than systematic, processing (Mackie and Worth, 1990). Thus, the
impact of peripheral cues increases, while the impact of central cues decreases. The
increase in the favourability of the message evaluation, caused by a positive mood, is also
greater for low NFC individuals than it is for high NFC individuals (Batra and Stayman,
1990).
 Perception of humour banner advertising 191

Proposition 4 The effect of humour banner advertising will be moderated by

consumers’ need for cognition. Humour banner advertising will induce
a more favourable attitude towards the banner and the advertised brand
and a higher intention to click than non-humour banner advertising when
consumers have low NFC than when they have high NFC.

8 Conclusions

This paper develops a conceptual framework of how consumers perceive humour banner
advertising. We propose that the use of humorous appeal in banners is an effective
advertising strategy. There are two main arguments for this suggestion. First, consumers
are not deliberately seeking banners and are usually exposed to banners involuntarily.
Such situations are characterised by low audience involvement. The second argument is
that superior performance of humour, as an attention-grabbing tool in low-involvement
situations, can potentially increase the effectiveness of banners.
We also propose that the effectiveness of humour banner advertising is moderated by
a set of factors. Humour banner advertising is more effective when it is placed on
websites that do not have a perfect content fit with the advertised products, when online
consumers are engaged in experiential rather than surfing online behaviour and when
consumers have low NFC.
Several implications that are not intuitive can be drawn from our framework. First,
managers may expand their advertising campaigns to websites that do not necessarily
have the content that represents the perfect fit with the advertised products. Placing
humour banner advertising on such irrelevant, but very popular, websites may increase
traffic to the company’s website. This strategy may produce even stronger results for
companies with campaigns that focus on humorous appeal. Next, managers should pay
more attention to websites that provide entertainment and, thus, do not attract people who
engage in goal-directed online behaviour. Placing humour banners on such websites may
be a cost-efficient advertising strategy.
One concern about using humour in advertising is that humour may deflect attention
from the advertised product. However, the online environment provides consequent
rather than simultaneous exposure to a banner and the advertised website. At the time of
exposure to a banner, consumers do not see the target website.
The main limitation of our research is that it has conceptual nature and the
propositions were not tested. However, our conceptual model provides a good starting
point for further research. First, our propositions should be tested with different products
and audiences to support the validity of the model (both internal and external). Additional
research may explore in-depth banner characteristics and content. For example, how a
banner’s size, shape, colour or specific execution affects a consumer’s perceptions and
attitudes. Lohita et al. (2003) found that offering incentives in banners results in lower
click-through rates. What type of content may increase this important measure of the
effectiveness?
Another promising direction for further research is the use of humour in banners with
violent or taboo-arousing themes that are relatively new themes in the advertising
practice. Research has shown that the use of humour in such situations allows for
lessening the perception of violence (Blackford et al., 2011; King, 2000) and reducing the
192 I. Makienko

perceived level of taboo (Sabri, 2012). Will a low-involved audience have similar
reactions? Qualitative research will also add value and direction for future investigation
of humour banners. While quantitative research is the default mode in advertising
literature – 73% vs. 27% (Cho and Khang, 2006), qualitative research may provide more
in-depth insights about humour banners. Further research should also show under what
conditions the use of humour banners is particularly effective and define the border
conditions of applicability of humour appeal in banners. It’s possible that humour
banners will have shorter wear-out periods (just because they are more memorable). Such
a contingency approach is adopted in traditional humour research (Zhang and Zinkhan,
2006) and maybe it is not different in the online environment. Finally, it would be
interesting to check whether humour appeal is equally effective in social media, a new
emerging communication platform.
With increased advertising, clutter marketers are spending more and more money to
be noticed by consumers. The attention-grabbing function of advertising is very
important because consumers cannot process information that they have missed. As a
result, consumers cannot proceed to higher stages in their decision-making process. The
high attention-grabbing potential of humour banner advertising provides affordable
means of advertising to small and medium companies that may not compete with the
financial resources of big companies. The powerful, attention-grabbing nature of humour
banner advertising will result in higher brand recall, more favourable perception of the
advertised product and a higher intention to click. At the same time, humour banner
advertising should be thoroughly pretested. As mentioned earlier, the effect of humour
depends heavily on the receiver’s field of experience. Humour is open to idiosyncratic
interpretation and may be perceived as not funny or appropriate in some situations.

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