Children’s memory for television advertising: effects of programme–advertisement congruency.

The effects of the surrounding programme environment and level of involvement upon children’s memory (year 6 primary school, mean age 11.1, SD ¼0.4, 48 boys and 69 girls) for television advertisements was examined by manipulating the degree of congruency between the production genre of the programme and the advertisements embedded within it. In Experiment One (n ¼56) the ad-break comprised either all cartoons (n ¼4) or all non-cartoons (n ¼4). In Experiment Two (n ¼61) cartoon and non-cartoon advertisements were equally represented in each ad-break. After viewing, participants provided evaluative ratings of the programme and completed memory tests for advertisements, using prompted recall and brand-recognition tasks. Memory performance overall was better for cartoon advertisements than for non-cartoon advertisements, with the latter being poorly remembered when presented in the non-cartoon programme. In Experiment Two, the programme had no effect on overall recall of advertising, but was related to brand recognition, which was better for advertisements placed in the cartoon programme. Free recall of non-cartoon advertisements was best when placed in the cartoon programme, while free recall only of cartoon advertisements was best when placed in the non-cartoon programme. The measures of audience involvement (programme ratings) did not show any significant correlation with memory for advertising