'Colors' in ads can help disseminate apt message in as little as tenth of second

A new study has revealed that "color" of the central object in an advertisement plays a significant role in communicating the message in as little as a tenth of a second, when exposure is blurred and lacks visual detail.

In contrast to the traditional color strategy of advertisers, some advertisers use the color of the brand logo for the background of their ads to "infuse" the whole ad with its color; however, this strategy did not pay off under brief and blurred ad exposures.

The study also revealed for the first time that despite ads' brief and blurred exposure to consumers, some ads still strongly communicate their main message.

Michel Wedel, Pepsico Chaired Professor of Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland, said that if the ad has been well designed, it could still communicate their main message and cut through the clutter.

While advertisers are often recognized and rewarded for producing unique, surprising and atypical ads, these ads do not communicate their meaning very well when exposures are brief and blurred. Under these conditions, ads that are typical for the category or brand do very well. Such ads have a central diagnostic object, such as a car in a car ad or a female face in a personal care ad.

Rik Pieters, Professor of Marketing at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management of the University of Tilburg, said that rapid perception or "ad cut through" should be considered as a communication goal in advertising strategy.

The study is published in Marketing Science, a publication of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).