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• 20 Jun 2023
• Cold Call Podcast

Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover: Lessons in Strategic Change

In late October 2022, Elon Musk officially took Twitter private and became the company’s majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition saga. He appointed himself CEO and brought in his own team to clean house. Musk needed to take decisive steps to succeed against the major opposition to his leadership from both inside and outside the company. Twitter employees circulated an open letter protesting expected layoffs, advertising agencies advised their clients to pause spending on Twitter, and EU officials considered a broader Twitter ban. What short-term actions should Musk take to stabilize the situation, and how should he approach long-term strategy to turn around Twitter? Harvard Business School assistant professor Andy Wu and co-author Goran Calic, associate professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, discuss Twitter as a microcosm for the future of media and information in their case, “Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk.”

• 06 Jan 2021
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• 02 Mar 2020
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• 18 Sep 2017

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• 26 Jul 2017

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• 13 Mar 2017

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• 06 Mar 2017

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• 13 Feb 2017

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• 04 May 2016

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• 21 Mar 2016

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• 28 Oct 2015

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What Digital Advertising Gets Wrong

Too often, ads end up targeting people who would buy the product anyway.

Digital ads look way more effective than they are because they’re sold on the number of people who buy after clicking on them. Most of these people are likely to buy anyway, without an ad’s prompt. You can reduce the amount you spend on ads and get more sales from the ones you make if they’re targeted at people who aren’t already your customers.

The effectiveness of digital ads is wildly oversold. A large-scale study of ads on eBay found that brand search ad effectiveness was overestimated by up to 4,100%. A similar analysis of Facebook ads threw up a number of 4,000%. For all the data we have, it seems like companies still don’t have an answer to a question first posed by the famous 19th century retailer John Wanamaker : Which half of my company’s advertising budget is wasted?

• Sinan Aral is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts our Elections, our Economy and our Health — and How We Must Adapt .  

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The impact of interactive advertising on consumer engagement, recall, and understanding: A scoping systematic review for informing regulatory science

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation RTI International, Research Triangle Park, Durham, NC, United States of America

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Data curation, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Office of Prescription Drug Promotion, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, US Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

• Kristen Giombi, 
• Catherine Viator, 
• Juliana Hoover, 
• Janice Tzeng, 
• Helen W. Sullivan, 
• Amie C. O’Donoghue, 
• Brian G. Southwell, 
• Leila C. Kahwati

• Published: February 3, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339
• Reader Comments

We conducted a scoping systematic review with respect to how consumer engagement with interactive advertising is evaluated and if interactive features influence consumer recall, awareness, or comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures for informing regulatory science. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Business Source Corporate, and SCOPUS were searched for original research published from 1997 through February 2021. Two reviewers independently screened titles/abstracts and full-text articles for inclusion. Outcomes were abstracted into a structured abstraction form. We included 32 studies overall. The types of interactive ads evaluated included website banner and pop up ads, search engine ads, interactive TV ads, advergames, product websites, digital magazine ads, and ads on social network sites. Twenty-three studies reported objective measures of engagement using observational analyses or laboratory-based experiments. In nine studies evaluating the association between different interactivity features and outcomes, the evidence was mixed on whether more interactivity improves or worsens recall and comprehension. Studies vary with respect to populations, designs, ads evaluated, and outcomes assessed.

Citation: Giombi K, Viator C, Hoover J, Tzeng J, Sullivan HW, O’Donoghue AC, et al. (2022) The impact of interactive advertising on consumer engagement, recall, and understanding: A scoping systematic review for informing regulatory science. PLoS ONE 17(2): e0263339. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339

Editor: Qihong Liu, University of Oklahama Norman Campus: The University of Oklahoma, UNITED STATES

Received: September 15, 2021; Accepted: January 15, 2022; Published: February 3, 2022

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: Funded through a contract from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to RTI International (Contract 75F40120A00017, Order Number 75F40120F19003). KG, CV, JH, JT, BS, LK are employees of RTI International. HS and AO are employees of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. HS and AO (employees of the sponsor) participated in the study design, decision to publish, and critically reviewed the manuscript prior to submission.

Competing interests: HS and AO are employees of the study sponsor. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

1. Introduction

In 2020, it is estimated that nearly $356 billion was spent on digital advertising in the United States [ 1 ]. Much of this advertising consists of display ads, social media ads, search engine marketing, and email marketing often with interactive components to target the 85% of US adults who go online daily [ 2 ]. An interactive ad encourages consumers to interact with the ad (and thus the brand), rather than just passively view the ad. Although interactivity is often considered a vital element of successful online advertising [ 3 , 4 ], its impact on consumer engagement and decision-making is not entirely clear.

The academic definition of interactive advertising has evolved and varied at least in part as possibilities for ad design and placement have shifted, meaning interactive advertising can be defined differently depending on the context. Experts have defined interactive ads in terms of processes, features, and/or user perceptions, and no consensus about the definition has been reached to date [ 5 – 14 ]. Conceptual frameworks considered by researchers in approaching interactive advertising have tended to include descriptions of how users behave in response to ads [ 13 , 15 – 17 ]. Metrics employed by the advertising industry also have shifted over time. The operationalization of interactive advertising often has been determined by the conceptual framework used and the outcome of interest to the researcher.

With an increased presence of interactive advertising in digital and social media [ 18 ], it is critical to understand how consumers engage with these types of advertisements and whether interactive features influence consumer recall, awareness, or comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures. This is of particular importance for products or services for which advertising content is regulated, such as prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and financial products or services, to ensure that such advertising does not introduce barriers or challenges to consumer understanding of risks associated with such products. Especially within the past decade, regulatory science researchers have embraced the tools of social science to assess consumer perceptions of risk as well as potential impediments to consumer understanding [ 19 , 20 ]. Social science research can offer evidence of advertising effects on consumer perceptions, and agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have used such approaches to assess consumer engagement with different types of advertisements, such as direct-to-consumer prescription drug television ads [ 21 ]. In order to assess whether interactive advertising poses new theoretical challenges or opportunities, we conducted a scoping systematic review to summarize the research related to consumer engagement with interactive advertisements and impact on recall and understanding of product claims and risk disclosures.

The protocol for this scoping review was registered at Open Science Framework on October 26, 2020 [ 22 ]. The goal of this scoping systematic review was to describe the extant literature on interactive advertising and consumer engagement, particularly as it concerned regulated product advertising and its influence on comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures. We designed the four research questions (RQs) that guided this scoping review to identify gaps in the evidence base and summarize important considerations needed to inform the design and conduct of future primary research studies in this area. The four RQs were:

• RQ 1: What methods and measures are used to evaluate consumer engagement with interactive advertisements in empirical studies?
• RQ 2: In empirical studies of interactive advertising in naturalistic or real-world contexts, to what extent do consumers engage with interactive advertisements?
• RQ 3: What is the association between features of interactive advertisements for goods or services and consumer engagement, recall, awareness, or comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures?
• RQ 4: How do interactive advertisements for goods and services compare to non-interactive advertisements (e.g., traditional print or broadcast advertisements) with respect to consumer engagement, recall, awareness, and comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures?

2.1 Search and data sources

We searched MEDLINE via PubMed, PsycINFO, Business Source Corporate, and SCOPUS for original research published in English from January 1, 1997, through February 17, 2021, using search terms related to advertising and marketing, internet, and the outcomes of interest (e.g., engagement, knowledge, click-through rate). Little research on digital advertising was conducted prior to the mid-1990s, and our preliminary evidence scan showed very few papers published prior to 1997. The detailed search strategy is in S1 Appendix . We also searched reference lists of systematic and narrative reviews and editorials where relevant.

2.2 Study selection

Two reviewers independently screened titles/abstracts and full-text articles for inclusion based on study selection criteria for each research question. Disagreements at the full-text review stage were resolved by a third reviewer. Detailed study selection criteria are described in S2 Appendix . In brief, we included all studies among persons of any age in the general public who were characterized as being a potential consumer target for interactive advertising. For all RQs, we included studies that examined exposure to interactive advertisements, which we defined as the promotion of a product, service, or idea using various features or tools that provide the opportunity for persons to interact directly with the ad and potentially influence/inform the remaining sequence, appearance, or content to be presented about the product, service, or idea. For RQ 2, we included only studies with exposure to interactive advertising in naturalistic or real-world contexts. For RQ 3, studies that compared alternative versions of advertisements with interactive elements that varied with respect to the type or level of interactivity were selected. For RQ 4, studies that compared interactive advertisements with traditional advertising (i.e., print ads, broadcast ads, or online/internet ads without interactive elements) were included.

Eligible outcomes varied by RQ. For RQ 1, we included studies with any measure of consumer engagement. For RQ 2, we required objective measures of engagement such as time spent viewing, content navigation, click-through rates, page views, shares, likes, or leaving comments. For RQs 3 and 4, we required studies to report outcomes including consumer recall, awareness, and comprehension of product claims, risk disclosures, or both. Lastly, we included only studies conducted in countries designated as very highly developed per the United Nations Human Development Index to maximize applicability to decision-makers in such settings [ 23 ].

2.3 Data abstraction and synthesis

For each article included, one reviewer abstracted relevant study characteristics and outcomes into a structured abstraction form, and a second senior reviewer checked the form for completeness and accuracy. We narratively synthesized findings for each RQ by summarizing the characteristics and results of the included studies in narrative and tabular formats. Because this was designed as a scoping review, we did not conduct risk of bias assessments on included studies, quantitatively synthesize findings, or conduct strength of evidence assessments.

We screened 3,765 titles and abstracts and 136 full-text articles. We included 32 studies published in 33 articles ( Fig 1 ) [ 7 , 24 – 55 ]. Twenty-three studies addressed RQ 1, eight studies addressed RQ 2, nine studies addressed RQ 3, and four studies addressed RQ 4. An overview of included studies is provided in Table S4-1 in S4 Appendix . A list of full-text studies that we reviewed and excluded is provided in the S3 Appendix .

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.g001

3.1 Research question 1: What methods and measures are used to evaluate consumer engagement with interactive advertisements in empirical studies?

3.1.1 study characteristics..

We identified 23 studies eligible for RQ 1 that were published between the years 1997 and 2019 and conducted across multiple countries [ 24 – 30 , 33 , 35 – 42 , 46 , 47 , 50 – 53 ]. An overview of the studies is in Table S4-1 and S4-2 in S4 Appendix . Six were observational studies evaluating consumer response to real-world advertisements or campaigns [ 24 , 25 , 28 – 30 , 37 ]. The rest of the studies were experiments conducted in laboratory or controlled environments. The sample sizes across the included studies ranged from 20 to 116,168 participants; however, two studies [ 29 , 30 ] did not report the number of persons participating in the study.

The types of interactive advertisements evaluated varied across the included studies. Six studies [ 26 , 33 , 35 , 40 , 47 , 50 ] evaluated banner ads, three studies [ 7 , 36 , 46 ] evaluated product websites, three studies [ 29 , 30 , 41 ] evaluated paid search engine ads, three studies [ 38 , 51 , 52 ] evaluated interactive television ads, two studies [ 24 , 27 ] evaluated social network site ads, one study [ 39 ] evaluated a pop-up ad and the rest of the studies evaluated other types of digital ads. This included short-message-service TV marketing [ 37 ], an ad with a video clip embedded in a digital magazine [ 42 ], ads within a simulated online store [ 53 ], and combinations of different types of digital and online ads [ 25 , 30 ]. The type of products advertised across the included studies included unregulated consumer products (e.g., digital cameras) and services (e.g., travel planning); regulated products and services (car insurance, financial); and health/health behavior campaigns.

3.1.2 Findings.

An overview of findings is in Fig 2 . Authors of the six observational studies reported engagement outcomes associated with real-world advertising or marketing campaigns [ 24 , 25 , 28 – 30 , 37 ]. Authors of four studies reported objective measures of the proportion of users exposed to an ad that clicked on the ad (i.e., “click-through rates”) by using platform-specific (e.g., Facebook, Google AdWords) analytic tools for advertisers [ 24 , 29 ], specialized web tracking software that members of a market research panel consented to have installed on their computers to monitor web behavior [ 28 ], or a unique event identifier created on the advertiser’s server whenever an online ad was clicked [ 30 ]. Authors of the other two observational studies reported subjective measures of engagement. In one study, authors used audio, computer-assisted self-interviews that asked respondents about their engagement with online marketing of a specific class of product [ 25 ]. In the other study, authors used post-campaign surveys (mode not specified) to evaluate engagement outcomes [ 37 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.g002

Authors of the 17 experimental studies reported engagement outcomes from experiments using actual real-world ads or from experiments using fictitious ads designed specifically for the experiment. Authors of the experimental studies controlled participant exposure to the ads, and depending on the measure, outcome measurement occurred either concurrently with the ad exposure or through completion of post-exposure surveys or interviews.

Two of the experimental studies used objective measures of ad engagement employing eye-tracking technologies during exposure to evaluate user engagement with digital ads placed on online platforms (Facebook page, blog, and industry-specific search engine) [ 26 , 50 ]. In Muñoz-Leiva, Hernández-Méndez, and Gómez-Carmona [ 26 ] the ads used were fictitious, and the sites they were placed on were mocked up to resemble existing platforms (e.g., Facebook). In Barreto [ 50 ], each participant’s own Facebook page and the authentic Facebook page for a specific brand of athletic shoe was used. In both studies, authors first calibrated the eye-tracking equipment for each participant, then assigned one or more tasks for the participants to complete (e.g., navigate to find a specific item). The eye-tracking technology measured fixation counts and duration of fixation on the ad portion of the screens as participants navigated through the task.

Seven of the experimental studies were designed using a within- or between-subjects randomized factorial design or both [ 27 , 33 , 36 , 38 , 41 , 51 , 52 ]. In these studies, authors manipulated two or more ad features, including message/information content, tone, amount, or presentation order; images; screen placement; and level of interactivity. Eight of the experimental studies were parallel-group randomized experiments with one group assigned to a manipulated ad exposure in one or more ways and the other group assigned to a control ad exposure [ 7 , 35 , 39 , 40 , 42 , 46 , 47 , 53 ]. In both types of experimental studies, measures of ad engagement varied and included both subjective (e.g., user intentions as to whether they would click the ad or like or share the ad post) and objective measures (e.g., actual click-through rates on ads encountered, view duration tracked by computer). Nearly all studies also measured additional outcomes such as attitudes toward ads, ad or brand recall, or purchase intentions through post-exposure surveys.

3.2 Research question 2: In empirical studies of interactive advertising in naturalistic or real-world contexts, to what extent do consumers engage with interactive advertisements?

3.2.1 study characteristics..

Eight studies addressed RQ 2; these were published between 2006 and 2019 (Table S4-3 in S4 Appendix ) [ 24 , 28 – 31 , 39 , 47 , 54 ]. Six were observational studies [ 24 , 28 – 31 , 54 ], and two studies were experimental but conducted in real-world (i.e., not laboratory) settings [ 39 , 47 ]. The sample sizes across the included studies ranged from 30,638 to 2,000,000 participants. The types of interactive advertisements evaluated varied and could include more than one type of ad. Three studies evaluated banner ads [ 28 , 30 , 47 ], two studies evaluated social network site ads [ 24 , 31 ], and one study evaluated a pop-up ad [ 39 ]. Three studies evaluated other types of digital ads including paid search engine ads and video ads [ 28 , 29 , 54 ]. The type of products advertised across the included studies included unregulated consumer products and services and health/health behavior campaigns.

Authors measured consumer engagement with click-through rates; page views; and/or number of “likes,” comments, or shares on social media. The two experimental studies analyzed click-through rates for banner and pop-up ads [ 39 , 47 ], while the six observational studies analyzed click-through rates for banner ads [ 28 , 30 ], search ads [ 28 – 30 , 54 ], and social media interaction [ 24 , 31 ].

3.2.2 Findings.

An overview of findings is in Fig 3 . The level of engagement by consumers varied across studies. Six studies reported click-through rates ranging from 0.02% to 2.30% [ 24 , 29 , 31 , 39 , 47 , 54 ]. Two of these studies also reported differences in click-through rates when selected characteristics of the ad were varied, such as differences on which page the ad was placed, a variable delay before the ad was displayed [ 39 ], or whether the ads were static or morphing and whether they were context matched to the website on which they were placed [ 47 ]. In contrast to other studies reporting click-through rates, Graham et al. [ 30 ] reported a much higher click-through rate (81.6%); this study used ads to recruit individuals to a website to register for smoking cessation treatment.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.g003

Other measures of consumer engagement beyond click-through rates included number of page views (after clicking through an ad) and interactions such as liking, sharing, or posting comments to ads on social networking platforms. Two studies measured page views, which is the number of pages the viewer visited after going to the landing site [ 29 , 39 ]. In Birnbaum et al. [ 29 ] the median number of pages visited on the website (not including other relevant websites that were linked on the study site) was 1.29. Moe [ 39 ] measured the difference in number of page views when users were exposed to the ad on a gateway page of an informational website compared with exposure to the ad from a content page of the website. The mean number of page views after an ad on a content page (6.31) was higher than page views after an ad on a gateway page (4.86, P < .001), suggesting greater engagement from consumers when involved in the content.

Two studies measured interactive engagement with social media ads through “likes” and shares [ 24 , 31 ]. Horrell et al. [ 24 ] defined levels of consumer engagement as “low” if a consumer liked a page or reacted to a post and “medium” if a consumer shared or commented on a post. Over a 5-week advertising campaign targeted to 91,385 users of a specific Facebook page site targeting lung cancer awareness, the page had 2,602 reactions to posts, 149 page likes, 452 shares, and 157 comments [ 24 ]. Similarly, Platt et al. [ 31 ] reported findings from a 1-month time period in which a Michigan biobank advertising campaign was targeted to an estimated 2 million state residents aged 18 to 28. The campaign’s social media presence garnered 516 page likes, 477 ad likes, 25 page post shares, and 30 entries into an advertised photo contest. This study also reported that a greater percentage of viewers clicked an ad or post they saw when it was associated with the name of a friend who had already liked the Facebook page [ 31 ].

3.3 Research question 3: What is the association between features of interactive advertisements for goods or services and consumer engagement, recall, awareness, or comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures?

3.3.1 study characteristics..

We identified nine studies eligible for RQ 3 that were published between the years 1997 and 2019 (Tables S4-4 and S4-5 in S4 Appendix ) [ 26 , 32 , 34 , 36 , 43 – 45 , 51 , 53 ]. Eight studies were conducted as experiments [ 26 , 32 , 34 , 36 , 43 , 44 , 51 , 53 ], and the remaining study was a meta-analysis [ 45 ]. The sample sizes across the included primary research studies ranged from 60 to 1,600 participants. The type of advertisements evaluated varied. Four studies [ 32 , 34 , 36 , 44 ] evaluated product websites, one study [ 26 ] evaluated banner ads, one study [ 43 ] evaluated both banner ads and advergames, and two studies [ 51 , 53 ] evaluated other types of digital ads (e.g., interactive TV ads and interactive ads in a simulated online store). The included studies manipulated the ad stimuli to vary the level of interactivity or the type of interactive features included in the ad. Interactive features used in these studies included clickable hyperlinks, navigation bars, navigation buttons, rollover and clickable animation, responsive chat features, comment forms, and interactive game elements. The type of products advertised across the included studies included unregulated consumer products and services as well as regulated products or services.

The meta-analysis reported on 63 experimental studies (total N = 13,484) that evaluated how web interactivity affects various psychological outcomes and how those effects are moderated [ 45 ]. Of the included studies, half focused on interactivity within an advertising context, and 25% reported cognition outcomes, the only outcomes of relevance to this review.

3.3.2 Findings.

An overview of findings is in Fig 4 . In the meta-analysis, Yang and Shen [ 45 ] defined cognition measures such as comprehension, elaboration, knowledge acquisition, and recall. The authors reported no significant association between interactivity and cognition (correlation coefficient 0.05, P = .25). Across the eight primary research studies for this RQ, outcomes varied widely by level or type of interactivity. Five of the studies measured consumer recall of the brand, product, or service advertised [ 32 , 34 , 36 , 43 , 44 ]. Four of these involved websites or web pages with varying levels of interactivity [ 32 , 34 , 36 , 44 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.g004

In Chung and Zhao [ 36 ], undergraduate university students viewed websites advertising cameras, which were classified as either low, medium, or high interactivity based on the number of hyperlinks included. They found a significant association between a higher number of clicks available and higher memory scores [ 36 ].

In Chung and Ahn [ 32 ], authors asked participants to view either a website with a linear structure (scroll to bottom of page and click link to move to next page), an interactive structure (multiple links available on the page), or a mixed linear and interactive structure and asked them to write down all the product information they could recall after exposure [ 32 ]. The authors found that participants who viewed the linear web page exhibited the highest memory score [ 32 ].

In Macias [ 44 ], participants viewed either a low or high interactivity website that advertised one of two consumer products. The high interactivity websites included rollover animation, hyperlinks, comment forms, and chat features. The authors found that participants who viewed the high interactivity website exhibited greater comprehension [ 44 ].

Polster et al. [ 34 ] reported the results of a study comparing interactive and noninteractive versions of a website with important safety information (ISI) about a fictitious medication viewed either on a desktop computer or smartphone. Authors found that a higher percentage of participants allocated to noninteractive websites saw any ISI as measured through objective clicking and scrolling behavior compared with participants who were allocated to the interactive websites ( P < .001). Further, a higher proportion of desktop-using participants allocated to noninteractive websites recalled at least one relevant side effect compared with participants allocated to the interactive websites ( P < .001) [ 34 ]. A higher proportion of participants using a smartphone allocated to noninteractive websites also had higher recall of at least one relevant side effect compared with participants who were allocated to interactive sites, but this finding was only statistically significant for one of the two noninteractive layouts [ 34 ]. Authors also reported the mean percentage correct recognition of medication side effects and conducted additional analyses of recognition limited to those participants who saw any ISI (Table S4-4 in S4 Appendix ).

Finally, in Daems et al. [ 43 ], Belgian secondary students viewed ads for a fictitious smartphone that were either interactive advergames, static in-game ads, interactive banner ads, or noninteractive banner ads. Authors found that interactive banner ads led to the highest percentage of participants exhibiting brand recognition (60.4%), followed by static in-game ads (22.4%), noninteractive banner ads (21.3%), and finally advergames (14.3%) [ 43 ]. They also found that interactive banner ads led to the highest memory of product characteristics (8.22 out of a 12-point scale), while noninteractive banner ads led to the lowest memory (3.87) [ 43 ].

Three studies measured time spent viewing ads and results were mixed [ 26 , 51 , 53 ]. In Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker [ 51 ], participants from a Belgian market research firm watched a Dutch travel agency interactive TV ad with low, medium, or high interactivity. The interactivity level varied based on the presence of clickable links, navigation bars, and two-way communication. The authors reported significantly more time spent viewing the high interactivity ad (6.1 minutes) than the low interactivity ad (4.4 minutes) [ 51 ]. In Yang [ 53 ], each participant viewed one interactive ad and one noninteractive ad for one of two consumer products. The high interactivity ads offered more user control over order of information, duration of each page, and ability to skip information. Authors found that interactive ads were viewed for less time than noninteractive ads ( P < .01) [ 53 ]. In Muñoz-Leiva et al. [ 26 ], the authors compared “Travel 2.0 websites” with embedded vertical banner ads on 3 different platforms: a Facebook page, a blog, and a Tripadvisor page that varied by level of interactivity [ 26 ]. While the banner ads on all three platforms included a call to action and a clickable link to an airline website, the Facebook ad was the most interactive with the ability to like, comment, and share the ad followed by the blog with the ability to comment on the blog post and finally the Tripadvisor page. The authors used eye-tracking technology to measure the number of visual fixations on the ad, number of seconds until the first fixation on the ad, and total duration of fixations on the ad. They found a significant difference in the number of ad fixations (Facebook, 19.1; blog, 11.7; Tripadvisor (6.1), P < .001). Significant differences were also observed across platforms for other measures (Table S4-5 in S4 Appendix ) [ 26 ].

3.4 Research question 4: How do interactive advertisements for goods and services compare with noninteractive advertisements (e.g., traditional print or broadcast advertisements) with respect to consumer engagement, recall, awareness, and comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures?

3.4.1 study characteristics..

We identified three studies eligible for RQ 4 that were published between the years 2008 and 2018 (Table S4-6 in S4 Appendix ) [ 30 , 48 , 49 ]. One was an observational study [ 30 ], and the other two studies were conducted as experiments. The sample sizes for the two experiments were 233 [ 49 ] and 9,902 [ 48 ] participants; the observational study [ 30 ] did not report the number of persons evaluated. The types of interactive advertisements varied. The observational study [ 30 ] compared banner ads and paid search ads (interactive advertising) with billboards, TV ads, radio ads, outdoor signage, direct mail, and physician detailing (noninteractive advertising). One experimental study [ 48 ] had print flyer, online flyer, and no flyer groups, while the other experimental study [ 49 ] compared a standard TV commercial, a PC advergame, and an interactive TV commercial offering an advergame.

Eligible outcomes for this review reported across the three included studies also varied. The observational study [ 30 ] evaluated outcomes associated with real-world advertising including the number of log-ins and pages viewed, session length, and long-term cookies. Authors of the two experimental studies [ 48 , 49 ] randomized participants to different ad types and evaluated recall in addition to other outcomes such as attitudes, which were not within the scope of this review.

3.4.2 Findings.

An overview of findings is in Fig 5 . Across the three included studies, outcomes varied widely. Graham et al. [ 30 ] examined how online advertising increases consumer demand for smoking cessation treatments in Minnesota and New Jersey (N = NR) by comparing the impact of interactive advertisements (banner ads, paid search ads) versus traditional advertisements (billboards, TV ads, radio ads, outdoor signage, direct mail, physician detailing). Outcomes related to engagement are reported in the RQ 2 section of this review. Ultimately, 9.1% of those who clicked the interactive ad registered for treatment compared with 18.6% of those who were directed to the website from traditional media [ 30 ]. The authors found that compared with traditional ads, online ads engaged a higher percentage of males, young adults, racial/ethnic minorities, individuals with a high school education or less, and dependent smokers. While the authors found significant differences in website engagement metrics (e.g., average session length, pages viewed, percentage posting in public forums) between online and traditional ad responders, they noted that the differences in utilization are too small in magnitude to be meaningful.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.g005

Ieva et al. [ 48 ] estimated the effect of an online versus print promotional advertising flyer on customer response with an experimental design recruiting from a random sample of customers from a supermarket chain (N = 9,902; however, only the 303 that reported viewing the flyer were included in the analysis). The online flyer was a replication of the print flyer with no banners, videos, or embedded links; however, users could click to zoom or move to another page. The authors found no statistically significant differences in recall, recognition, or advertisement memory measures between the online and print flyers.

Bellman et al. [ 49 ] compared the effectiveness of PC advergames, TV commercials, and interactive commercials enhanced with advergames on recall for four test brands of food or personal hygiene products in an experimental study. Members of an Australian audience panel (N = 233) were randomized to one of three ad types. The authors reported significantly higher unaided recall of at least three unique points about the ad content for participants who viewed the PC advergame compared with those who viewed the traditional TV commercial and as compared with the interactive TV ad. Authors observed no significant difference between participants who viewed the interactive TV commercial and the traditional TV commercial.

4. Discussion

4.1 summary of evidence.

Study design and outcomes varied widely within the evidence base for each RQ. That variation itself is noteworthy, as it affects comparability of results and suggests strengths and weaknesses of different approaches for future research in this arena. Through this review, we also can see ways in which existing literature may not yet be optimal for answering questions about consumer risk perception and decision making in response to interactive advertising; much available evidence focuses on indicators of short-term consumer attention in engaging with advertising more than on consumer information processing beyond eyeball movement or click behavior.

Within the 23 studies eligible for RQ 1 (which summarized methods and measures used to evaluate consumer engagement), six were observational studies and 17 were experimental studies. In the experimental studies, methods included within- and between-subjects randomized factorial design and parallel-group randomized experiments. In both types of studies, objective (e.g., click-through rates, eye-tracking metrics) and subjective (e.g., post-campaign surveys, interviews) measures were used to report engagement outcomes. This variability in methods is understandable. Some measures of engagement are most optimally assessed with experimental designs that allow control over content and resource-intensive measurement of respondents (e.g., eye-tracking metrics). Observational studies nonetheless also can offer objective measures of engagement on a larger scale and without the generalizability concerns stemming from volunteer bias inherent to small sample-sized experimental designs. We also did find examples of large-scale experiments [ 39 , 42 ] involving manipulation of advertising stimuli conducted with various kinds of media (digital magazine, websites publishing reviews, news, or information).

Based on this review, consumer engagement is an umbrella concept covering a range of operationalization efforts. The ways in which studies measured engagement reflect 1) varying levels of technologic sophistication of the advertising platform or ad itself, 2) the salience of click-through rates as a metric in commercial advertising (regardless of the theoretical value of that metric to understanding consumer decision making), and 3) varying levels of integration into a broader social media campaign. We did not identify any differences in the way engagement was measured for regulated versus non-regulated products in this scoping review, per se, but the number of studies focused on regulated products or services also was quite limited. Future research on consumer engagement with interactive ads for regulated products should be able to use both observational or experimental designs, depending on the specific outcomes in question.

For RQ 2, eight identified studies reported on the extent to which consumers engage with interactive advertisements in naturalistic or real-world contexts. Consumer engagement was measured with click-through rates; page views; and/or number of “likes,” comments, or shares on social media. Click-through rate was the most common engagement measure used for this RQ; however, the way in which click-through-rates were calculated varied, limiting direct head-to-head comparisons across studies. A click-through rate may offer a conceptually simple way of measuring consumer engagement because it is closely aligned to the evaluation of cost-per-thousand advertisement impressions (i.e., cost-per-mille) and cost-per-click advertising campaigns. In practice, however, variability in click-through rate calculation limits the ability of current literature to offer definitive conclusions related to the concept. Moreover, in the context of evaluating regulated advertising, crude click-through-rates of a single hyperlink in a digital ad may not be enough to provide a nuanced understanding of whether users engage with specific parts of an ad, specifically, claims of benefits, risk disclosures, or both.

For RQ 3, we identified nine studies, eight of which were experiments, that focused on the association between features of interactive ads and consumer engagement, recall, awareness, or comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures. The studies varied the type or level of interactivity in the ad. Some studies found significant associations between higher levels of interactivity and higher memory scores, comprehension, and brand recognition. Other studies found the opposite: better recall and higher memory scores with fewer interactive features. Studies that measured time spent viewing the ads also had mixed results: one study found higher levels of interactivity led to more time spent viewing the ad, whereas one study found the opposite. Further, a meta-analysis reported no correlation between interactivity and measures of cognition.

The evidence for clear relationships between interactive features and outcomes of interest for this scoping review was mixed, precluding any definitive conclusions. Further, some studies addressing this RQ were published during an early era of online advertising that has faded in relevance to present circumstances. Importantly, we also found instances of confounding. In addition to manipulating interactivity, advertisers often manipulated other aspects of the ad not related to interactivity (e.g., tone, text or graphic content). Previous studies have demonstrated that for regulated products, such as prescription drugs, these features moderate consumer understanding of product claims and risk disclosures [ 21 , 56 ]. Thus, future studies evaluating variations in interactive ads of regulated products and services should ensure that study designs and ad manipulations are robust for evaluating independent effects and potential interactions.

For RQ 4, three identified studies compared interactive with noninteractive advertisements with respect to consumer engagement, recall, awareness, and comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures. One observational study found that compared with traditional ads, online ads engaged certain segments of the population better. The two experimental studies found no significant differences between the interactive and traditional ads, but one study found significantly higher unaided recall for participants who viewed a PC advergame compared with those who viewed the traditional or the interactive ads. With the mixed results from this limited number of heterogeneous studies, there is no conclusive evidence on how interactive advertisements compare with noninteractive advertisements with respect to consumer engagement, recall, awareness, and comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures. The limited number of studies may reflect the challenge in conducting direct comparisons of traditional and interactive advertising in the same study. Digital and online advertising offer new and, in some cases, more objective ways of measuring advertising effectiveness that have no counterpart in the evaluation of traditional advertising. Given shifts away from traditional advertising to digital and online marketing because of better returns on investment and ability to target audiences, comparing traditional to interactive ads may not be a relevant comparison for future studies.

4.2 Limitations of evidence

Studies were quite heterogenous with respect to study design, populations evaluated, types of ads used, and measures reported; this limited our ability to conduct a robust synthesis of outcomes. Many studies were conducted among university students; whether findings from such studies would generalize to broader populations is not known. The measures used by some studies to evaluate product or service information recall or knowledge did not appear to be validated. The era over which studies were conducted was broad; some of the interactivity features or platforms used in included studies are likely obsolete or have been replaced by more sophisticated approaches to interactive advertising.

4.3 Limitations of this review

We limited this scoping review to studies published in English from very highly developed countries to increase applicability of findings to policy makers concerned with regulation of interactive advertising in such countries. Study indexing in bibliographic databases was variable and inconsistent; thus, it is possible we missed some relevant studies. Our RQs were focused on outcomes related to consumer engagement with interactive ads, and information recall and comprehension, as it related to product information or risk disclosures. We did not consider consumer attitudes or purchase behavior. We limited measures of engagement to studies conducted in naturalistic or real-world contexts because experimental studies typically manipulated ad exposure or instructed participants what to view and may have put limits on duration of exposure that would not reflect engagement outside of a controlled environment. We did not assess the risk of bias of included studies consistent with a scoping review approach.

4.4 Research gaps

Although the research on interactive advertising is extensive in terms of the volume of available publications, as judged by the size of our initial search yield, the amount of research specifically focused on the influence of interactive advertising on product information recall and specifically risk perception is sparse. Several studies that we screened but excluded as not eligible for this scoping review focused on evaluating tone, content, graphics, placement, or variable deployment of an interactive ad and impact on consumer attitudes about the product or brand or subsequent purchase intention or behavior (see S3 Appendix for a list of excluded studies). Whether such outcomes correlate to an accurate understanding of product features or services and risk disclosures is not known but could be relevant when considering interactive advertising for regulated products, such as prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and financial products or services. Regardless, it is clear that available research on interactive advertising does not provide much of the evidence most useful to regulatory science focused on whether regulated advertising encourages informed decision making about products.

We need rigorously designed studies of consumer experiences with interactive advertising that use objective and validated measures to assess recall and understanding of product or service information and risk disclosures. We note a disjuncture between our selected studies and recent work on social media activities. A type of study we commonly encountered during screening but excluded as not eligible were studies evaluating the impact of influencer marketing through social media. Though not a focus of this scoping review, we noted many of these studies in the latter part of the time period we searched, suggesting an increasing use of this type of digital, interactive advertising for the future and a possible area for future inquiry.

5. Conclusion

This scoping systematic review summarized the research related to consumer engagement with interactive advertisements and impact on recall and understanding of product claims. The evidence shows that consumers do engage with interactive advertisements, but the evidence is mixed as to whether features of interactive advertising increase consumer engagement, recall, awareness, or comprehension of product claims and risk disclosures. Only a few studies compared traditional advertisements with interactive advertisements on these outcomes and these results also were mixed. Some of the limitations of existing interactive advertising literature as a source for informing regulatory science appears to reflect inconsistent labeling of concepts as well as adherence to industry metrics rather than regulatory science needs.

Supporting information

S1 checklist. prisma checklist..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.s001

S1 Appendix. Detailed search strategy.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.s002

S2 Appendix. Study selection criteria.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.s003

S3 Appendix. Excluded studies.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.s004

S4 Appendix. Results tables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263339.s005

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Sharon Barrell and Loraine Monroe for editing and document preparation.

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Exploring global trends and future directions in advertising research: A focus on consumer behavior

• Published: 03 June 2023
• Volume 43 , pages 6193–6216, ( 2024 )

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• Ahmed H. Alsharif 1 ,
• Nor Zafir Md Salleh 1 ,
• Mahmaod Alrawad 2 , 3 &
• Abdalwali Lutfi 4  

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This study aims to select the physiological and neurophysiological studies utilized in advertising and to address the fragmented comprehension of consumers' mental responses to advertising held by marketers and advertisers. To fill the gap, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework was employed to select relevant articles, and bibliometric analysis was conducted to determine global trends and advancements in advertising and neuromarketing. The study selected and analyzed forty-one papers from the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009–2020. The results indicated that Spain, particularly the Complutense University of Madrid, was the most productive country and institution, respectively, with 11 and 3 articles. The journal Frontiers in Psychology was the most prolific, with eight articles. The article "Neuromarketing: The New Science of Consumer Behavior" had the most citations (152 T.Cs). Additionally, the researchers discovered that the inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri were associated with pleasant and unpleasant emotions, respectively, while the right superior temporal and right middle frontal gyrus was connected to high and low arousal. Furthermore, the right prefrontal cortex (PFC) and left PFC were linked to withdrawal and approach behaviors. In terms of the reward system, the ventral striatum played a critical role, while the orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial PFC were connected to perception. As far as we know, this is the first paper that focused on the global academic trends and developments of neurophysiological and physiological instruments used in advertising in the new millennium, emphasizing the significance of intrinsic and extrinsic emotional processes, endogenous and exogenous attentional processes, memory, reward, motivational attitude, and perception in advertising campaigns.

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Introduction

Qualitative methods have been used in marketing research for a long time to measure the consumer’s attitudes and behaviors toward advertising campaigns, which is actually measuring consumers' awareness behavior such as attitudes and perceptions (Carrington et al., 2014 ). Therefore, advertisers and marketers resorted to the use of neuroscientific methods or techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the marketing field in general and advertising in specific to study, measure and understand the unconscious/subconscious responses of customers to stimuli, which largely contribute in the decision-making process (Harris et al., 2018 ; Plassmann et al., 2012 ). Using neuroscientific methods to better understand the concealed behavior of customers toward external stimuli such as marketing and environmental in the last 20 years has led to an emerging mixed field, so-called “Neuromarketing”, which used neuroscientific and self-report methods to get more accurate findings about conscious and unconscious responses of the customer to advertising (Alsharif et al., 2021a ). According to the literature, in 2022, professor Smidts ( 2002 ) coined the NM (NM) term. According to Javor et al. ( 2013 ), NM is placed on the borderline of neuroscience, marketing, and psychology, which has been spread by the USA company named "Bright House Company" (Fortunato et al., 2014 ), when this company established the first neuroscience department for marketing research.

Contemporarily, NM is one of the most important fields for studying customers' neural and physiological responses, such as inner and extrinsic responses toward marketing stimuli and advertising. In addition to the aforementioned, some researchers and scholars considered NM an embryonic field that needs more improvements to overcome the artifacts in some techniques (Alsharif et al., 2021b ). Bočková et al. ( 2021 ) mentioned that NM is in an improving process because of technological advancement in communication and medical fields recently. The technology has been utilized by the marketing and advertising leader to enhance marketing and advertising success by managing and reducing task conflicts, as stated by To et al. ( 2021 ). Isabella et al. ( 2015 ) have categorized neuromarketing instruments into two groups: (1) neurophysiological tools, including EEG, MEG, fMRI, PET, and TMS, and (2) physiological tools, such as GSR, ET, ECG, and EMG. As mentioned by Ahmed et al. ( 2022c ); Izhikevich ( 2003 ), neurophysiological instruments capture the cognitive and emotional reactions toward advertising, including arousal, pleasure, engagement, approach, and withdrawal. Meanwhile, physiological tools like eye-tracking (ET), according to (Ahmed et al., 2020 ; Dimpfel, 2015 ), monitor physiological responses such as visual fixation, pupil dilation, eye movements, heartbeat, perspiration, and excitement at the point of purchase. This enables the acquisition of dependable and useful information concerning preferences, such as whether a product is liked or not liked.

According to the literature, the first official publication in NM was done in 2004 by McClure et al. ( 2004 ), which contributed to shifting the NM studies from a pure study to a practical one. NM research is highly significant for the academic and industrial world to overcome the limitations of traditional methods, such as consumer social bias (e.g., consumer choices can be affected by others) (Alsharif et al., 2022 ; Fortunato et al., 2014 ). The COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of concerns globally in markets, businesses, and establishments’ activities (Aki et al., 2020 ). However, understanding the global trends in advertising research within the NM field (e.g., the most prolific countries/academic institutions, the most-cited articles, the most productive journals, authors, and so forth) is still unclear in academic studies. Thus, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the top and new approaches in the field, recent methods, and other relevant aspects that would be more interesting and beneficial to scholars. Our key contribution is to provide a broader perspective that goes beyond just publication and citation data, and we hope that our article will be useful to researchers and practitioners in their research. In addition, The main difference in the current paper is that the current paper focused on empirical that used neurophysiological such as fMRI, EEG, fNIRS and physiological tools such as ET, ECG, GSR/EDA, and EMG to study the mental responses of consumers behavior (e.g., inner and extrinsic emotional responds, perceptions, motivational of customers attitudes, reward system, endogenous and exogenous attentional processes, and memory) toward advertising research within NM. The present study endeavors to achieve a precise and succinct conclusion by conducting an in-depth analysis of the extracted articles. The primary contributions of this research are outlined as follows:

Provide the latest update on the global trends in advertising research within the NM field, such as the most prolific countries/academic institutions, the most-cited articles, the most productive journals and authors, etc.

Provides a comprehensive assessment of the up-to-date advertising studies that have used neurophysiological and physiological techniques to investigate the consumers’ behavior, such as inner and extrinsic emotional responses, motivational attitudes, perceptions, reward, memory, and endogenous and exogenous attentional processes toward advertising.

Provides a comprehensive overview of studies that used neurophysiological and physiological tools between 2009 and 2020.

In summary, this study offers a thorough examination of neuromarketing and its present research objectives. The second section outlines the data collection materials and methodologies, while the third section presents the bibliometric and content analysis of the articles selected for this study. The fourth section discusses the limitations and challenges of applying neuromarketing. Findings are discussed in section five, and the study concludes in section six.

This study is designed to identify original articles on advertising in the field of neuromarketing by searching the Web of Science (WoS) database, thereby addressing a gap in the existing literature. WoS was selected over Scopus due to its cleaner data, which helps to minimize duplication, and because it includes publications from top-tier journals (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). In the first step of our research, we followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol developed by Moher et al. ( 2015 ) to identify empirical articles in advertising research that used neurophysiological and physiological tools to investigate consumers' behavior in the context of neuromarketing (as shown in Fig.  2 ). For the second step, we conducted a bibliometric analysis to identify global trends and advancements in advertising research within the field of neuromarketing, including the most productive countries and academic institutions, the number of publications and citations, and the most prolific authors in the field (as recommended by Ahmed et al. ( 2022a ), (Ahmed et al., 2022b ); Ahmed et al. ( 2021 ); Pilelienė et al. ( 2022 )). To conduct this analysis, we followed the guidelines Block and Fisch ( 2020 ) set forth to ensure that our analysis was impactful and accurate, and used VOSviewer software to visualize our findings. VOSviewer is a widely-used tool for bibliometric research and has been employed in previous studies (see Abbas et al. ( 2022 ); Ali et al., ( 2021a , 2021b ); Alsharif et al. ( 2020 ); Alsharif et al. ( 2021c )). Figure  1 provides an overview of the analytical structure of our study, including the methods used and the organization and structure of the study itself.

Analytical structure of the current paper

These processes will give us a deep insight into advertising advancement by identifying and analyzing the general and specific domains. Additionally, it would give us a comprehensive understanding of the most common NM tools used in advertising research, the most productive academic institutions, and the top productive authors to be considered when conducting further research in advertising research. Therefore, the findings provide a guide for scholars who are interested in the advertising and NM field.

Relevant documents were extracted from the WoS by using the following query applied to the title, abstract, and keywords: (("neuromarketing" OR "consumer neuroscience") AND ("adverti*")) to extract the relevant articles related to this study and fill the gap. This paper has focused on the papers that used neurophysiological and physiological tools in advertising research between 2009 and 2020; therefore, the total number of publications was 125 documents from 2009 to 2020. The study focused on original journal articles, which are subject to a more thorough review process than conferences and book chapters. This helps to increase the credibility of research published in journals (Saha et al., 2020 ).

The researchers selected 41 articles from the WoS database and followed the PRISMA protocol, which involves four steps for selecting relevant articles. These steps include identification through database searching, screening of publications, assessing eligibility, and selecting relevant articles. The included articles had to meet the specific characteristics outlined in Fig.  2 :

Articles published in advertising research within the NM context from 2009 to 2020 were included.

Articles that used neurophysiological and physiological tools in advertising research were included.

Articles published in the non-English language were excluded.

Publications such as book chapters, conferences, and so forth were excluded.

PRISMA flow chart for selecting publications for the current study

Table 1 provides an overview of the chosen articles in advertising research. By analyzing these articles, we were able to identify three key dimensions in the field of neuromarketing: (i) studies on advertising in the context of neuromarketing; (ii) the use of neurophysiological and physiological techniques in advertising; and (iii) consumers' unconscious and subconscious reactions to advertising. Through our review of these papers, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter and meet the goals of this review article.

Descriptive analysis

We conducted a descriptive analysis of forty-one articles in the advertising field and utilized neuromarketing instruments to determine the overall trend in advertising, including annual and cumulative publications of countries, academic institutions, and journal outlets.

Growth of the publication

Forty-one articles in journals belonging to the WoS database related to advertising have been published, which have used NM tools. As we can see there is a fluctuation in the number of publications in advertising and NM research from 2009 to 2020. In 2020, it was the highest number of annual publications with thirteen articles, as depicted in Fig.  3 .

The annual and cumulative publications in advertising and NM

Journal outlets

The results indicate that six countries were represented by eight publishers, who published a minimum of two articles in advertising and NM. Table 2 lists the publishers and their respective number of publications. Frontiers Media Sa and MDPI, both based in Switzerland, were the top publishers in NM and advertising with fourteen articles, which accounted for 34% of the total articles. Grupo Comunicar and University Complutense Madrid, based in Spain, followed with six articles. While Hindawi Ltd had only published two articles in advertising and NM, their article by Vecchiato et al. ( 2011 ) had the most citations with fifty-seven citations. Stallen et al. ( 2010 ) from the Netherlands had the second most cited article with thirty-eight citations, and they also published two articles.

Bibliometrics analysis

Productive countries and academic institutions.

A total of 41 papers from the WoS database were analyzed, and the results are summarized in Table 3 . The findings reveal that Spain, Italy, and the USA are the primary contributors to advertising research in the context of NM, accounting for over 60% of the total publications. This suggests that these countries play a crucial role in advancing studies in advertising research within the NM context. Specifically, Spain had the highest number of publications, with eleven papers (approximately 26.83% of total papers), followed by Italy, with almost eight documents (19.51% of total documents). The USA ranked third with seven documents (almost 17% of total documents), while Australia and England tied for fourth place with four documents each. The Netherlands had three documents, ranking fifth. Finally, China, Lithuania, and Germany, with two documents each.

Table 4 presents a group of academic institutions that have contributed significantly to advertising research in NM, publishing at least two papers. Sapienza University Rome, Complutense University of Madrid, and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos are the most prolific institutions. They have produced nine documents with three publications from each institution. Following them are Brainsigns SRL, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Vytautas Magnus University, Swinburne University of Technology, and the University of Salamanca, having contributed two documents each, making twelve publications among them.

Prolific authors

We have identified the top prolific authors in the NM context who have contributed at least two advertising research papers. These authors belong to four countries, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, and Australia. Table 5 presents the list of these authors who collaborated extensively and published 26 documents. Notably, each author has published an equal number of two papers, and hence, we have grouped them into four clusters, as shown in Fig.  4 . Cluster 1, the most collaborative cluster, comprises six authors from Sapienza University Rome (Italy), namely Babiloni, Fabio; Cherubino, Patrizia; Carato, Myriam; Rossi, Dario; Modica, Enrica; and Cartocci, Giulia. Cluster 2 includes four authors from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain), namely Goya-Esteban, Rebeca; Banos-Gonzalez, Miguel; Baraybar-Fernandez, Antonio, Barquero-Perez, Oscar. Cluster 3 comprises two authors, Pileliene, Lina, and Grigaliunaite, Viktorija, from Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). Finally, Ciorciari, Joseph from Swinburne University of Technology (Australia) belongs to cluster 4.

The network map of leading authors (minimum contribution of two documents)

Leading journal

In this section, we have identified eight highly productive journals that have published at least two papers in advertising research within the NM context. These journals are presented in Table 6 , and Frontiers in Psychology emerged as the most prolific journal, publishing eight articles. Comunicar and Frontiers in Neuroscience followed closely behind, with four articles each. The remaining journals, including Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, Journal of Economic Psychology, Scientific Annals of Economics and Business, Behavioral Sciences, Neuropsychological Trends, and Vivat Academia, contributed two papers each. Additionally, the number of citations a journal receives is an indicator of its article's quality and popularity, while the publication number reflects its productivity. To evaluate the leading journals, we computed their average citation per item (ACI) using total citations (TC) and total publications (TP) from the WoS database. Table 6 indicates that the Journal of Economic Psychology and Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience have the highest ACI, despite only publishing two papers on advertising and NM, with 32 and 31 citations, respectively. These findings suggest that many publications do not necessarily imply a high number of citations.

Keywords analysis

The bibliometric analysis involves representing the frequency of keywords in papers numerically (Wang & Chai, 2018 ), to assess their relevance and coherence with the papers' content (Comerio & Strozzi, 2019 ). Additionally, the correlation between pairs of keywords is expressed numerically as link strength, where a higher numerical value indicates a stronger link based on the number of times both keywords appear in the same paper (Ravikumar et al., 2015 ). The total number of links signifies the overall number of appearances of the two keywords in the same article. In this study, we conducted a keyword co-occurrence analysis on 56 keywords from 41 articles in 23 journals, with a minimum requirement of one source document. Synonymous keywords were also analyzed before inclusion, such as "neuromarketing" and "consumer neuroscience." To appear on the bibliometric map between two keywords that occur together in the same paper, a minimum of two occurrences of a keyword was required in VOSviewer.

According to Comerio and Strozzi ( 2019 ), keyword co-occurrence analysis is a crucial technique for understanding the content of articles and evaluating current research trends in a specific topic, such as advertising in neuromarketing. This technique is useful in identifying research directions and assessing hot themes. Ahmed et al. ( 2020 ) also noted that the analysis could reveal current academic documents in advertising and neuromarketing trends. The keyword co-occurrence map, as shown in Fig.  5 , indicates that neuromarketing research mainly focuses on marketing practices like advertising (12 occurrences, 63 total link strength), which means that advertising is mentioned 12 times and is linked to the NM theme 63 times. Brand (6 occurrences, 42 total link strength) is the second most frequent keyword, followed by brain processes such as attention, emotion, and memory. Finally, neuromarketing and advertising are linked to neuroscience tools such as EEG and fMRI, indicating that NM research aims to explore the consumer's brain responses to marketing stimuli such as advertising and brand.

All keywords co-occurrence (with min. two occurrences)

We hypothesized a strong association between neuromarketing/consumer neuroscience and neurophysiological tools such as EEG and fMRI. We also expected a robust relationship between unconscious and subconscious responses like "attention," "emotion," and "memory," and marketing stimuli such as "brand," "advertising," and "advertising effectiveness." As an illustration, "advertising" emerged as the most prominent theme with twenty-seven frequencies and hundred-twenty-seven total link strength (TLS), followed by "attention" with eight frequencies and fifty-one TLS, and "emotion" with six frequencies and twenty-seven TLS. Notably, "EEG" exhibited a high connection with neuromarketing and advertising research. Table 7 summarizes the most frequent keywords with a minimum of five occurrences, and the most common keyword is "NM.".

Citation analysis

In this section, we employed citation analysis to identify the most popular articles in the area of advertising and NM. Citation analysis is a method that counts the number of times other scholars refer to a paper. It is an effective way to determine the most popular articles in a given field (Kumar et al., 2019 ). We scrutinized and evaluated the citations of forty-one papers. The outcomes are presented in Table 8 , which summarizes the most-referenced articles in the field of advertising and NM with a minimum of ten citations. Our results indicate that the most-cited article in this area is "Neuromarketing: The New Science of Consumer Behavior" authored by Morin ( 2011 ) and published in the journal Society, with a total of hundred-fifty-two citations. The second most-cited paper is "On the Use of EEG or MEG Brain Imaging Tools in Neuromarketing Research" authored by Vecchiato et al. ( 2011 ) and published in the journal Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, with 57 citations as of the end of 2020. Finally, the least cited paper on the list is "Using Support Vector Machine on EEG for Advertisement Impact Assessment" published by Wei et al. ( 2018 ) in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, with a total of ten citations.

Content analysis of selected papers

Inner and extrinsic emotional processes.

According to Dolcos et al. ( 2019 ); Eijlers et al. ( 2020 ), feelings are an extrinsic emotional status that is a conscious response of customers, which can be translated to pleasant/unpleasant responses toward advertising. Feelings are considered an important aspect of understanding and interpreting the physiological response to advertising campaigns (Eijlers et al., 2020 ; Siddharthan et al., 2018 ). Morris et al. ( 2009 ); Pham et al. ( 2013 ) mentioned that feelings stimulated by advertising refer to the response of customers toward that advertisement, which can be considered as the enormous index of customers' responses to the advertisement (Ahmed et al., 2023b ). According to Dolcos et al. ( 2019 ); Ramsoy ( 2014 ), emotions are an inner emotional status, which is an unconscious/subconscious response of customers. These responses are linked to the involuntary nervous system, for example, increased heartrate in some cases as fear, anger, happiness, and so forth, which plays a vital role in the decision-making process, learning, and solving problems (Gordon, 2006 ). In addition to the aforementioned, changes in the involuntary nervous system result in changes in facial muscles, such as zygomatic and corrugator muscles, which can provide important information about unspoken decisions, customers' inner and extrinsic emotional status toward advertising (Winkielman et al., 2008 ). Thus, inner and extrinsic emotional responses have grabbed advertisers and marketers researchers to employ both in advertising campaigns to grab customers’ attention and influence their decision (Alsharif et al., 2021a ).

According to Barrett and Satpute ( 2013 ), emotions are produced from a set of neural activities, which execute basic functions psychological such as perception and memory. Emotion has several definitions based on the following way of the scholar. For example, Damasio and Carvalho ( 2013 ); Damasio ( 1999 ) defined emotion as changes in a customer's or individual's neural and physiological responses according to previous experiences. At the same time, LeDoux and Brown ( 2017 ) defined it as the relationship between the customer/individual and the surrounding environment, including physiological and behavioral factors. Accordingly, emotions' role in decision-making has been explored and interpreted using neurological and cognitive frameworks such as somatic sign theory (Damasio, 2012 ; Reimann & Bechara, 2010 ). Valence measures from positive, i.e., a pleasure, to negative, i.e., displeasure; at the same time, arousal measures from high, i.e., a surprise, to low, i.e., calmness, as depicted in Fig.  6 (Lang et al., 1997 ; Posner et al., 2005 ; Russell & Barrett, 1999 ).

Dimensions model of emotions (Posner et al., 2005 )

(Sundar & Kalyanaraman, 2004 ) noted that several studies have utilized self-report and physiological methods to map and measure customers' emotional responses to ads. For instance, Lajante et al. ( 2020 ) used both EMG and self-report to assess customers' positive or negative reactions to ads. They found that these reactions positively affected customers' attitudes toward the ads. Baraybar-Fernández et al. ( 2017 ) employed ECG, EDA/GSR, and questionnaires to evaluate the impact of visual and audio messages in ads on participants. They discovered that sad messages had a significant influence on the participants. Barquero-Pérez et al. ( 2020 ) used ECG, EDA, and questionnaires to investigate the emotional responses to different kinds of ads and found that each type of ad elicited a unique emotion, including surprise. Guixeres et al. ( 2017 ) conducted brain response, ECG, and eye-tracking studies and found a strong correlation between ad effectiveness and the number of views on YouTube. According to Herrador et al. ( 2020 ), the EDA experiment showed that both male and female groups experienced strong initial activation. Still, there was reduced activation during the male group's most critical part of the video material. Finally, Venkatraman et al. ( 2015 ) discovered that activity in the ventral striatum could predict the response to advertising.

Neurophysiological instruments like fMRI and EEG have been extensively utilized in advertising research by various researchers research (Banos-González et al., 2020 ; Boscolo et al., 2020 ; Crespo-Pereira et al., 2017 ; Eijlers et al., 2020 ; Guixeres et al., 2017 ; Silberstein & Nield, 2012 ). For instance, the EEG analysis by Vecchiato et al. ( 2010 ); Vecchiato et al. ( 2012 ) indicated that the activity in the right frontal alpha is related to positive/liked ads, whereas the left frontal alpha is correlated with negative/disliked ads. Eijlers et al. ( 2020 ) used EEG to investigate and found that arousal is positively associated with successful ads among a large population, but consumer attitudes have a negative association. Morris et al. ( 2009 ); Shen and Morris ( 2016 ) employed fMRI to determine the affective responses of individuals towards advertising and found that the inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri were activated in response to positive and negative stimuli, respectively. Furthermore, they found that the right superior temporal and right middle frontal gyrus were activated in response to low and high arousal. Leanza ( 2017 ) EEG study found that some emotional aspects of the Virtual Reality (VR) experience significantly impacted consumer preferences.

Endogenous and exogenous attentional processes

Attention is described as "the tendency of humans to seek, accept, and absorb messages that match their interests, beliefs, values, expectations, and ideas while ignoring those that are incompatible with this system"(Hovland et al., 1949 ). Additionally described as selective perception (Wu et al., 2019 ). Selective perception is characterized by filtering away irrelevant information and focusing on essential information (e.g., different aspects of stimulus or different stimuli) (Dayan et al., 2000 ). Daily, customers are exposed to about 10 million pieces of visual information (such as advertisements, pictures, music, video, and color) through their senses (such as their eyes, ears, and skin). The majority of incoming data passes undetected, although consumers may digest about 40 bits of input data every second (Cherubino et al., 2019 ; Scheier & Held, 2006). That leads us to conclude that attention substantially impacts how consumers represent, interpret, and process information and, therefore, how they choose to prioritize information (Ahmed et al., 2020 ). Attentional and emotional processes are intertwined, and emotion is seen as a trustworthy and successful means of attracting customers' attention (Genco et al., 2013 ; Matthews & Wells, 1999 ). For instance, emotional stimuli are associated with the activation of the amygdala (AMY) and cingulate cortex (CC) in the brain (Montazeribarforoushi et al., 2017 ).

Attention is a fundamental brain activity that plays a vital role in assessing the efficiency of advertising campaigns; hence, it indicates consumer behavior and advertising effectiveness (Hamelin et al., 2021 ). The bulk of researchers have identified two systems to evaluate attention to advertising: (i) the exogenous attentional system and (ii) the endogenous attentional system (Kandel, 2009 ; Knudsen, 2007 ; Venkatraman et al., 2015 ). The exogenous attentional system (visual saliency/exogenous/involuntary) is triggered by external stimuli such as color, discount, voice, promotion, faces, text, novelty, brightness, etc., leading to the automatic processing of the information contained in external stimuli. Top-Down (goal-driven/endogenous/voluntary) attention, this other sort of attentional system is launched by internal and external objectives and expectations; hence, it is necessary to concentrate all of your mental energy on the goal you are seeking to accomplish, thereby filtering aims to reach your goals (Knudsen, 2007 ; Plassmann et al., 2012 ; Van Zoest et al., 2004 ).

Due to this, the underlying brain processes of attention and visual processing have a strong interest in advertising. In addition, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is strongly associated with top-down and bottom-up attentional processes (Crottaz-Herbette & Menon, 2006 ; Meneguzzo et al., 2014 ). For example, Smith and Gevins ( 2004 ) revealed that the occipital lobe (OL) is connected with the processes of paying attention to television ads. Recent fMRI examinations of Casado-Aranda et al. ( 2018 ) discovered that advertisement and gender voice (male, female) stimulate attentiveness-related brain areas. Ananos ( 2015 ) Examined the attention level and processing of information in advertising (content recognition) between groups of old and young individuals using EEG. According to their results, the attention levels of both age groups are the same, but the recognition level of young people is greater than that of the old. Guixeres et al. ( 2017 ) Using neural networks and neuroscience-based measures, we have undertaken an experiment to determine the correlation between ad efficacy (e.g., remember ad) and YouTube channel views (e.g., brain response, ECG, and ET). Their results indicate a significant correlation between neuroscience measurements, self-reported ad efficacy (e.g., ad recall), and YouTube views. Cuesta-Cambra et al. ( 2017 ) examine how information is processed and learned, as well as visual attention. Their findings indicated that the visual activity of men differs from that of women, but that this difference does not affect subsequent recall, where recall depends on the emotional value and simplicity of advertisements, while complex advertisements require more visual fixation and are therefore difficult to remember. EEG also demonstrated the significance of the fun component of memory and low involvement processing. Treleaven-Hassard et al. ( 2010 ) evaluated the involvement of consumers with interactive and non-interactive television advertisements for a certain brand. The results demonstrated that companies associated with interactive advertisements get higher automatic attention. Boscolo et al. ( 2020 ) used EEG and questionnaires; an experiment was undertaken to evaluate variations in the visual attention paid by males and females to print advertisements. Their results demonstrated a difference in visual attention between males and females but no difference between males and females.

According to Simson ( 2010 ), the marketing mix ingredients may be altered to impact the perceived value of a product, as shown by research on the formation of value perceptions. But research on how attention systems influence customers' perceptions and behaviors have been restricted to consumer report and behavioral studies, which rely on a rational report and are insufficient to describe attention processes. Two attentional systems affect consumers' perceptions (e.g., endogenous and exogenous attentional systems) (Ramsoy, 2014 ). Consumer perception is the first stage in engaging with marketing stimulus or any other environmental stimulation (Rezaee & Farahian, 2015 ). Hogg et al. (2006) The process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting marketing stimuli is termed perception. Therefore, people add meaning and interpret information in a specific manner, resulting in perceptions as the person's discoveries for each individual. As shown by Belch and Belch ( 2007 ), perception processing relies heavily on internal processes, including previous knowledge (experiences), present objectives, beliefs, expectations, wants, and emotions, as well as exterior inputs like color, direction, intensity, and movement (Ramsoy, 2014 ). Although this explains how consumer perceptions are created, the section about the explanation of sensations and the internal and unique assignment of meaning to sensations remains hidden and unexplained in depth in the present literature on consumer behavior. However, it is widely thought that the unconscious drives this process.

Cartocci et al. ( 2017 ); Modica et al. ( 2018 ) performed an experiment to determine the accuracy of EEG, GSR, and ECG measurements of the cerebral and emotional perception of social advertising campaigns (i.e., antismoking). According to the approach-withdrawal index, the anti-smoking campaign that used a symbolic communication style had the greatest approach scores. While images with a "fear-inducing appeal" and a narrative style had the highest and lowest effort value indices, respectively, those with a "fear-inducing appeal" had the highest effort value index. The fMRI investigation of Falk et al. ( 2012 ) To forecast the population-wide (non-sample) efficacy of stop-smoking advertisements. The results demonstrated that activity in a previous mPFC predicted the performance of numerous real-world advertising initiatives. Plassmann et al. ( 2008 ) Using the fMRI device, research was conducted on the sense of pleasantness in the taste of wines. Their results revealed a larger activity in the brain's medial OFC (mOFC) areas, responsible for perceived pleasure when individuals felt they were drinking costly wine. This suggested that the correlation between the pleasantness report and perceived product value and price was stronger than the correlation with flavor itself. Neuroscientists have discovered that the OFC and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are engaged in decision-making via product perceived value (Daw et al., 2006 ). Nuñez-Gomez et al. ( 2020 ) conducted an EEG experiment to test how two groups perceive advertising materials (e.g., a healthy group and a group with Asperger syndrome). The results indicate that the two groups perceptions of emotion and attention characteristics vary significantly. Gong et al. ( 2018 ) Using EEG/ERP, we conducted an experiment to determine the effect of sales promotion (e.g., gift-giving, discount) on customer perception and purchasing choices. The data indicate that discount promotions influence purchasing choices more than gift-giving promotions.

Motivational Attitude

Emotional and motivational processes complement one another. Lang and Bradley ( 2008 ). Chiew and Braver ( 2011 ); Pessoa ( 2013 ), motivating processes were discovered to have a significant impact on customers' cognition and behavior. The positive motivating cues, for instance, will encourage people to accomplish their objectives (e.g., get or predict a reward for performing a task correctly) (Chiew & Braver, 2016 ). The negative motivating stimuli may lead to distraction, whilst positive motivational stimuli can lead to focus. (Anderson et al., 2013 ). Pessoa ( 2013 ); Raymond ( 2009 ) argued that motivational processes are a compass of consumers' attitudes toward external stimuli in order to interact with the environment and attain objectives. Higgins ( 1998 ) proposed two dimensions for measuring motivational processes: withdrawal and approach attitudes. Researchers and practitioners examined the neurological responses of motivational processes to better comprehend customer reactions to commercials and goods.(Vecchiato et al., 2010 ). For instance, Cherubino et al. ( 2015 ); Davidson ( 2004 ) EEG was used to study the link between the prefrontal cortex and motivational characteristics. The results demonstrated that the PFC is associated with motivational aspects, with the right PFC correlating with withdrawal attitude and the left PFC with approach attitude. The EEG examination of Pozharliev et al. ( 2015 ); Zhang et al. ( 2019 ) documented brain reactions to luxury items (motivations). Findings revealed that social incentives play a crucial role in encouraging the purchase of luxury items to achieve social aspirations (at least one goal). The EEG investigation of Bosshard et al. ( 2016 ) In the right parietal cortices, liked brands display greater motivational features and activity signals than disliked ones. Therefore, a high correlation exists between PFC activity and motivational characteristics in response to marketing stimuli such as ads (Davidson et al., 1990 ). In order to orient the marketing mix, marketing academics, and practitioners must concentrate on the motivating processes of customers (e.g., target appropriate audiences and increase the effectiveness of ads and products) (Bahrabad & Farrokhian, 2017 ). According to past studies, NM study has evaluated television advertisements using an approach-withdrawal attitude (Di Flumeri et al., 2016 ). Therefore, approach/withdrawal motivational attitudes are critical to marketing and advertising research.

Reward Processing

According to the findings, scientists and practitioners must examine and understand the brain responses involved in processing rewards such as money, food, and social activities (Case & Olino, 2020 ); (Berridge, 1996 ; Knutson et al., 2001 ; Lehner et al., 2017 ). Because the positive incentive, such as monetary gain, food, or other rewards, improves precision and cognitive task performance (Anderson, 2016 ; Gilbert & Fiez, 2004 ; Krawczyk et al., 2007 ) by the modification of the initial attentional process. Anderson et al. ( 2013 ) It has been established that visual characteristics (e.g., product design) that are associated with reward will immediately capture the consumer's attention since they are prioritized. For instance, the design/preference of a product or brand may enhance activity in regions involved in reward processing, resulting in increased activation in areas of motives that may influence customers' purchasing choices (Cherubino et al., 2019 ). Numerous research focused on people's reactions to monetary rewards by analyzing their approach/avoidance attitude (Case & Olino, 2020 ; Knutson et al., 2001 ). For instance, Bechara et al. ( 1994 ) used GSR, an experiment titled "Iowa Gambling Task" was conducted to examine the effect of reward on decision-making. Participants were separated into two groups: the healthy group and the group with vmPFC lesions. The results indicated that healthy individuals were more perspiring, indicating that they experienced a negative emotional response when picking up cards from a losing deck, but the lesion group picked up cards regardless of whether they were winners or losers. Consequently, rewards significantly impact decision-making (Bechara & Damasio, 2005 ; Case & Olino, 2020 ; Maia & McClelland, 2004 ).

Numerous researchers have proven the significance of striatal activity in reward processing, with striatal components such as the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and putamen playing a vital role in reward anticipation and appraisal (Knutson & Wimmer, 2007 ; Lehner et al., 2017 ; Padmala & Pessoa, 2011 ). For example, Galvan ( 2010 ); Geier et al. ( 2010 ) Investigated the link between reward processing and the striatum via experimentation. Their results demonstrated that the ventral striatum (VS) is crucial in reward prediction. Padmanabhan et al. ( 2011 ) examined the relationship between the reward system and attention processes. Their research demonstrated that rewards promote cognitive control. Prior neurophysiological research has shown that rewards engage the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum (Davey et al., 2010 ; Izuma et al., 2008 ; Lieberman, 2013 ). The ventral striatum has previously been mentioned in relation to the reward system (Fliessbach et al., 2007 ). Consequently, the results imply that neurodevelopmental changes in striatum systems may lead to alterations in the manner in which reward influences attentional processes (Dolcos et al., 2019 ).

Memory is described as a continuous, brain-based learning process with input and output functions (Endo & Roque, 2017 ; Myers & DeWall, 2021 ). The input function encodes information while the output function retrieves it, which is important for advertising research (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968 ; Genco et al., 2013 ). Recall and recognition of advertising information are examples of the retrieval function (Venkatraman et al., 2015 ). Atkinson and Shiffrin ( 1968 ); Myers and DeWall ( 2021 ) proposed a three-step model of memory, known as the multistore model, which includes sensory memory, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM) (McLeod, 2017 ). As McGaugh ( 2000 ) demonstrated, memory-related brain processes can positively impact customer behavior, particularly regarding advertising recall and recognition. Research has shown that memory-related brain processes positively impact customer behavior, such as in advertising recall and recognition (Genco et al., 2013 ; Plassmann et al., 2012 ). Memory and emotion are intricately intertwined. For instance, past research has shown that emotional experiences are often recalled more than neutral ones, particularly if they match the events occurring at the time (Bradley et al., 1992 ).

According to extensive research, the hippocampus (HC) situated in the temporal lobe (TL) plays a crucial role in forming and processing memories (McGaugh, 2000 ). Additionally, HC activation has a strong association with long-term memory (LTM) and short-term memory (STM), which significantly influences customers' purchasing choices (Murty & Adcock, 2014 ; Wittmann et al., 2005 ). The AMY, located near the HC, is also critical for the memory system (McGaugh, 2000 ). Research has shown that stronger activity in the left prefrontal areas is connected with advertising efficacy and is deemed a predictor of advertising success (Silberstein & Nield, 2008 ) (Rossiter et al., 2001 ). Astolfi et al. ( 2009 ); Fallani et al. ( 2008 ) have utilized the EEG to assess the brain areas activated by effective memory encoding of television advertisements. They discovered increased activity in the cortical areas. Morey ( 2017 ) The effect of advertising messages on recognition memory was explored. The results demonstrated that gamma band activity has a direct influence on memory. The fMRI investigation of Bakalash and Riemer ( 2013 ); Seelig et al. ( 2014 ) tested the brain areas responsible for memory advertising. Stronger activity in the amygdala (AMY) and frontotemporal areas was related to memorable versus forgettable advertisements. Tests have been conducted to examine the relationship between ad content and the activity of frontal areas and memory, indicating that ad content boosted activity in frontal areas and memory input function (Langleben et al., 2009 ). Additionally, systematic fixations on the brand and graphical aspects of printed advertisements enhance brand memory, while text fixations have little impact on later recall Pieters and Wedel ( 2004 ).

To improve advertising research, it is important to focus on mental processes such as emotion, attention, memory, reward processing, motivation, and perception.

Difficulties and constraints of NM application

Data interpretation, time-consuming, and sample size.

According to the literature, NM deployment around the globe faces a number of challenges, including data interpretation and time consumption. For example, according to Ariely and Berns ( 2010b ); Banos-González et al. ( 2020 ); Cherubino et al. ( 2019 ); Gang et al. ( 2012 ), the extracted data from the NM experiment using fMRI or EEG is more difficult to understand than eye tracking data, which is one of the difficulties addressed by NM researchers. NM employs neurophysiological and physiological technologies that are exclusive to the medical industry, hospitals, and a few institutions. Consequently, NM trials often include small populations. According to Banos-González et al. ( 2020 ); Bercea ( 2012 ); Berns and Moore ( 2012 ); Dierichsweiler ( 2014 ); Gang et al. ( 2012 ); Hensel et al. ( 2017b ); Isa et al. ( 2019 ); Plassmann et al. ( 2015 ); Stanton et al. ( 2017 ); Wolf and Ueda ( 2021 ), Small sample sizes in NM and consumer behavior research are seen as one of the obstacles to generalizing experimental results. According to Eser et al. ( 2011 ), it is difficult to recruit subjects for experiments due to the unfavorable reputation associated with legal and ethical difficulties. In addition, employing neurophysiological techniques such as but not limited to the fMRI is time-consuming, with each participant requiring between 30 and 60 min for a single experiment. Banos-González et al. ( 2020 ); Dierichsweiler ( 2014 ); Schiessl et al. ( 2003 ); Turna and Babus ( 2021 ) mentioned that the complexity of the data, which necessitates time-consuming analysis, as well as the requirement for adequate time to design the experiment and recruit individuals to execute an experiment, are cited as one of the NM's most time-intensive obstacles.

Cost of NM approaches and research

According to the available literature, NM trials use pricey equipment. For instance, the fMRI device cost more than $1.5 million US. As endorsed by Ahmed et al. ( 2023a ); Ariely and Berns ( 2010a , 2010b ); Bercea ( 2012 ); Chandwaskar ( 2019 ); Dierichsweiler ( 2014 ); Gang et al. ( 2012 ); Mansor and Isa ( 2018 ); Sebastian ( 2014 ); Turna and Babus ( 2021 ), the expense of NM techniques like as fMRI (estimated at $1.5 million) is one of the most significant hurdles and limits encountered by neuro-marketers and researchers interested in conducting trials. Additionally, NM research is costly. As shown by Ariely and Berns ( 2010a , 2010b ); Bercea ( 2012 ); Hensel et al. ( 2017a ); Isa et al. ( 2019 ); Plassmann et al. ( 2015 ); Turna and Babus ( 2021 ) The high expense of performing NM trials in the business area to examine consumer behavior, such as emotions and decision-making, is one of the most significant obstacles and limitations to the expansion of NM research.

Neuromarketing specialists

Neurophysiological and physiological instruments need the employment of specialists with a medical or physiological background. As described by Dierichsweiler ( 2014 ); Hammou et al. ( 2013 ), NM research utilizes software and advanced technology. Experiments thus need a high degree of technical understanding of how to utilize NM tools, how to conduct experiments, and how to analyze the data/findings, which we lack (Ahmed et al., 2023a ; Banos-González et al., 2020 ).

Ethical concerns

In the last decade, there has been a rapid increase in interest in the phrase "NM."(Ariely and Berns ( 2010a , 2010b ); Du Plessis, 2011 ). NM is a relatively young branch of study concerned with cognitive and emotional neuroscience as well as tactics for influencing consumer behavior. This prompted society and academic sectors (e.g., researchers, journalists, and press) to explore the ethical implications (e.g., privacy, autonomy, secrecy) of utilizing these new approaches to control/influence consumer behavior (Martineau & Racine, 2019 ; Murphy et al., 2008 ; Singer, 2004 ; Thompson, 2005 ; Ulman et al., 2015 ). For instance, when the press and media have reported on the possible dangers of employing NM methods to locate a "purchase button" in the brains of persons (Blakeslee, 2004 ; Isa et al., 2019 ; Stanton et al., 2017 ; Thompson, 2003 ) to analyze their thoughts, memory, attention, and emotions in order to influence their purchase choices, in addition to ads and marketers manipulating their brains (Racine et al., 2010 ). The primary objective of NM is to locate a "purchase button" in the human brain that may be targeted and activated by commercial advertising in the future (Spence, 2020 ). Undoubtedly, some folks are concerned about the influence of NM. Thus, NM's potency has prompted several nations (such as France) to adopt specific measures against the unauthorized use of brain-imaging methods (Nemorin & Gandy-Jr, 2017 ; Oullier, 2012 ; Ulman et al., 2015 ). For instance, the French parliament updated its 2004 bioethics regulations to read: "brain-imaging methods may only be employed for medical or scientific research or in the framework of judicial expertise"(Spence, 2020 ).

In fact, NM is used to produce more appealing goods and advertisements, but not to control people's thoughts.(Stanton et al., 2017 ). According to Ariely and Berns ( 2010a , 2010b ), The use of NM methods in harmful advertising campaigns (e.g., cigarettes, alcohol, etc.) to promote profit rather than the well-being of customers led to a rise in concerns, and therefore, the discussion of the possible ethical difficulties of NM. The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission has prohibited these sorts of advertisements (MCMC) (Isa et al., 2019 ). Therefore, ethical concerns should be carefully explored (Pop et al., 2014 ). Thus, businesses must comply with government regulations and ethical standards (Arlauskaitė et al., 2013 ). In this context, several scientists and academics have identified the following ethical considerations for corporations and researchers: (i) privacy and secrecy; and (ii) independence(Isa et al., 2019 ).

Confidentiality and privacy

They are regarded as one of the most critical challenges, including maintaining participant data's confidentiality and anonymity. Due to the fact that neurophysiological procedures might reveal sensitive information that, if disclosed to the general public or marketing agencies, could be abused and breach ethical standards, these techniques are not permitted. Consequently, NM approaches may threaten people's privacy if this technology can efficiently and precisely interact with the consumer's brain (Murphy et al., 2008 ). Others, however, have stated that these concerns are probably unwarranted since current imaging technology does not provide exact forecasts of consumer choices (Brammer, 2004 ; Neurology, 2004 ). Therefore, the ethical dimension poses the greatest obstacle to the application of NM techniques. The protection of experiment participants is one of the top ethical concerns in NM research, as identifying the neural correlates of emotional and cognitive processes of interest for advertising can produce crucial information about consumer behavior (i.e., decision-making) and, thus, may compromise the participants' privacy (Hubert & Kenning, 2008 ; Javor et al., 2013 ; Murphy et al., 2008 ; Ulman et al., 2015 ), the risks associated with data confidentiality (Flores et al., 2014 ).

It is people's right that must make choices without external influence. However, some opponents have argued that the neuro marketer may employ NM tactics to influence customer decisions and disregard their autonomy in selecting items or commercials (Dierichsweiler, 2014 ). For instance, it conducted an experiment to explore the influence of the frequent presentation (without their conscious knowledge of the brand) of a Dasani water bottle on customer decisions, in which participants were instructed to pick one bottle from four distinct brands. The majority of participants selected the Dasani water bottle above others, indicating that regular exposure to a product, brand, or commercial may influence the consumer's brain and decision-making (Stanton et al., 2017 ). According to detractors, this is improper and immoral since it demonstrates that consumer autonomy has been undermined by repeated exposure to a certain product (Isa et al., 2019 ). However, the critics' argument that repeated exposure to a particular product, marketing, or brand plays a major role in affecting decision-making is not entirely accurate since the human brain is not that straightforward. It may be accurate to say that frequent exposure will lead to the prioritization of this product at the point of purchase but not necessarily to a purchase decision. Furthermore, decision-making processes in the brain are not easily measured or predicted because they are interconnected with numerous brain processes (e.g., emotional and cognitive processes). It has openly challenged what they define as a rush to embrace neurophysiology and explain all human brain activities, prompting him to invent the word "neuromania" to represent all of these concerning elements (Cherubino et al., 2019 ).

Based on an evaluation of relevant literature, the number of publications both yearly and cumulatively, has risen since 2004. The PRISMA framework recommended by Moher et al. ( 2015 ) was used to determine the appropriate papers for this study, as mental processes must be considered in advertising research. Among all publications, more than half were produced by three nations: Spain, Italy, and the United States. Spain was the most prolific, with eleven papers and 96 citations by the end of 2020, while Italy only released eight papers. The study employed bibliometric analysis to identify global trends in the subject area of interest. The most prolific journals with at least two publications each were located in six nations, including Switzerland, Spain, England, Poland, Netherland, and Italy. Frontiers in Psychology, with eight papers, was the most productive journal in NM and advertising, followed by Comunicar and Frontiers in Neuroscience, each with four papers. Additionally, the most-cited paper was "Neuromarketing: The New Science of Consumer Behavior," published by Morin ( 2011 ) in the journal Society, with over 152 citations.

According to this study, inner and extrinsic emotional responses, endogenous and exogenous attentional processes, memory, perception, motivational attitudes, and reward processing are the most important brain functions to be addressed in advertising research. The authors revealed that the right dlPFC plays a vital role in the motivational attitudes of customers, which in turn influences customer behavior to approach or avoid the advertisement, product, or even brand. At the same time, the gyrus regions have a key role in emotional valence and arousal responses such as pleasure/displeasure and high arousal/low arousal, wherein the inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri are related to pleasant and unpleasant responses. At the same time, the right superior temporal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus are associated with the intensity of arousal, i.e., high and low. In terms of memory and attention, the occipital lobe (OL) is important for both endogenous and exogenous attention processes, whereas the hippocampus (HC) plays a critical role in memory processes. Other brain regions, such as the amygdala and frontotemporal regions, are associated with remembering/un-remembering information. The ventral striatum (VS) in the basal ganglia plays a central role in reward processing, with components like the putamen, caudate nucleus, and nucleus accumbens (NAcc) involved in assessing consumer expectations versus actual reward. The ventral tegmental area is also considered part of the reward system, transmitting dopamine to other brain regions to influence goal-seeking behavior. The anterior cerebral hemispheres are important for withdrawal/approach motivation, with activity in the right prefrontal cortex (PFC) associated with withdrawal behavior and activity in the left PFC linked to approach behavior (Cherubino et al., 2015 ; Davidson, 2004 ). The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are crucial in perceiving reality and perceived value (Daw et al., 2006 ).

Implications for theory and practice of the study findings

Theoretically, neuroscientific tools and methods allow the measurement of brain and body activity signals that indicate consumers' reactions to advertising campaigns. These signals can include emotions, attention, memory, perception, reward processing, and motivation. For example, neurophysiological instruments such as fMRI, EEG, and fNIRS can record the neural signals of mental responses, such as advertising recall and recognition, while physiological instruments like ET, GSR, EMG, and ECG can provide valuable information on physiological responses like pupil dilation, heart rate, and so forth. By identifying the strengths and weaknesses of advertising campaigns before implementation, advertisers can develop more effective campaigns and rectify negative aspects that generate a negative attitude towards advertising. Furthermore, researchers can use the neural and physiological correlates of emotions, attention, memory, reward processing, motivation, and perception to predict consumer behavior following advertising campaigns, such as in response to presenter features like celebrities, gender voice, commercial appeal, social efforts like anti-smoking campaigns, and public health. Practically, this study can provide insight into how advertising works in customers' minds, which can be applied to develop appealing advertising in various sectors, including political, social, and commercial.

General Conclusion

Neuromarketing is a field with enormous potential to address commercial issues such as advertising effectiveness and budget waste and to develop more impactful advertising campaigns in the social, political, and public health domains to increase public awareness. With intense competition in the advertising industry, each agency seeks to discover the most advantageous strategies to outperform rivals and become the consumer's top choice. Therefore, advertisers and marketers have employed neuroscientific methods and techniques to explore, analyze, explain, and predict consumers' mental and physiological responses to marketing stimuli, especially advertising. They can increase advertising effectiveness by identifying the most important mental and physiological processes involved in advertising research (as described above in Sect. 3.3). The majority of advertising research studies have focused on these primary mental processes.

The results indicated that neuroscientific approaches and procedures are crucial for capturing and recording consumers' mental and physiological reactions to marketing stimuli, including but not limited to advertising research. For instance, neurophysiological instruments allow for measuring and recording the brain's activity signals, while physiological tools may record bodily reactions such as eye movements, perspiration levels, and fixation. We think this study gives a complete review of the current and most important neuroscientific approaches used in advertising research and the most important mental processes to be addressed in advertising research. Furthermore, we think that this study will assist researchers in identifying the appropriate mental processes for obtaining accurate and high-quality outcomes.

Limitations and future directions

The aim of this study was to reduce errors in methodology, but there are constraints that offer opportunities for further academic research. The study focused exclusively on empirical papers in advertising within the neuromarketing context, published in English, and using physiological and neurophysiological instruments, ignoring non-English books, conference papers, proceeding books, and chapter books, resulting in some bias. To overcome these obstacles in future studies, including the high cost of instruments and research, inadequate facilities in Business Schools, time consumption in data interpretation, experiment design, and participant recruitment, as well as increased funding in NM research and instruments (Ahmed et al., 2023a ). The authors suggest investigating the effect of ads on consumer persuasion, attractiveness, engagement, and enthusiasm, as well as the contributions of NM research to other areas, such as social sciences, public health, politics, and stocks. Additionally, researchers from developing countries are invited to publish in this field. To obtain accurate results, researchers and practitioners must use the appropriate instruments for their research.

Data Availability

Not applicable.

Abbas, A. F., Jusoh, A., Od, A. M., Alsharif, A. H., & Ali, J. (2022). Bibliometrix analysis of information sharing in social media. Cogent Business & Management, 9 (1), 2016556. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.2016556

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The authors would like to thank Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Azman Hashim International Business School; King Faisal University, College of Business Administration; Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, College of Business Administration and Economics; King Faisal University, for supporting this study.

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Alsharif, A.H., Salleh, N.Z.M., Alrawad, M. et al. Exploring global trends and future directions in advertising research: A focus on consumer behavior. Curr Psychol 43 , 6193–6216 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04812-w

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Consumer Behaviour to Be Considered in Advertising: A Systematic Analysis and Future Agenda

Ahmed h. alsharif.

1 Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai 81310, Johor, Malaysia

Nor Zafir Md Salleh

Shaymah ahmed al-zahrani.

2 Department of Economic & Finance, College of Business Administration, Taif University, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia

Ahmad Khraiwish

3 Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business, Applied Science Private University (ASU), Amman 11931, Jordan

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Not applicable.

In the past decade, neurophysiological and physiological tools have been used to explore consumer behaviour toward advertising. The studies into brain processes (e.g., emotions, motivation, reward, attention, perception, and memory) toward advertising are scant, and remain unclear in the academic literature. To fill the gap in the literature, this study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol to extract relevant articles. It extracted and analysed 76 empirical articles from the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009–2020. The findings revealed that the inferior frontal gyrus was associated with pleasure, while the middle temporal gyrus correlated with displeasure of advertising. Meanwhile, the right superior-temporal is related to high arousal and the right middle-frontal-gyrus is linked to low arousal toward advertisement campaigns. The right prefrontal-cortex (PFC) is correlated with withdrawal behaviour, and the left PFC is linked to approach behaviour. For the reward system, the ventral striatum has a main role in the reward system. It has also been found that perception is connected to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial (Vm) PFC. The study’s findings provide a profound overview of the importance of brain processes such as emotional processes, reward, motivation, cognitive processes, and perception in advertising campaigns such as commercial, social initiative, and public health.

1. Introduction

Self-report has been adopted in marketing activities to evaluate and identify consumer responses toward stimuli in the marketing sector, such as advertising practices. According to Carrington, et al. [ 1 ], the self-report methods reflect/measure the conscious responses (e.g., perception, approach/withdrawal attitudes, and thoughts) toward advertising. In fact, self-report cannot measure the unconscious or subconscious responses, which represent the majority of consumer responses, such as decision-making. Thus, researchers and marketers have adopted neuroscience tools such as electroencephalography (EEG) in the marketing field, to better understand the unconscious responses of consumers [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], which has led to an emerging new field, the so-called “Neuromarketing”. Smidts [ 5 ] was the first business researcher who coined the term “neuromarketing”, in 2002. Neuromarketing is a hybrid field containing numerous areas/fields such as psychology, marketing, and neuroscience [ 6 ]. According to Fortunato, et al. [ 7 ], the thanks for spreading this term was given to the Bright House Company when it created the first fMRI laboratory for marketing research.

In the hyper-competitive environment, neuromarketing is a mainstay in advertising because it has an opportunity to gauge consumers’ neural responses as emotional responses toward advertising; thereby, it is a revolutionary field for a better understanding of the subconscious and unconscious consumer responses. According to the literature, the rapid technological progress in neuroscience technology led to a better understanding of consumers’ behaviour in several contexts, such as, but not limited to, advertising [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Therefore, marketing and advertising leaders have used this technology to boost innovation and success in marketing and advertising, by controlling and minimizing task conflict [ 12 ]. According to Ramsoy [ 13 ], neuromarketing tools have been divided into four clusters, as follows: (1) neuroimaging tools such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS); (2) physiological tools such as galvanic skin responses (GSR), eye-tracking (ET), electrocardiogram (ECG), and electromyography (EMG); (3) self-report methods such as surveys, observations, focus groups, and interviews; (4) behavioural measurements, such as the implicit association test (IAT). For instance, neuroimaging tools have been used to gauge emotions, attention, and memory regarding advertising [ 14 , 15 ]. At the same time, physiological tools have been used to gauge the physiological responses of consumers, such as, but not limited to, visual fixation in-store at the purchasing point, thereby providing valuable and fruitful insights into the attitudes of consumers (i.e., approach, withdrawal) [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Behavioural measurements are used to measure the reaction time of consumers toward stimuli, and self-reporting is used to measure the conscious behaviour of consumers toward stimuli such as approach/withdrawal attitudes [ 18 ].

According to the literature, the first fMRI investigation in neuromarketing was carried out by McClure, et al. [ 19 ], and largely contributed to the practical studies of neuromarketing [ 18 ]. Therefore, neuromarketing research has received attention from both academia and the industrial world as a means of filling the gap in traditional marketing methods and overcoming the limitations by reducing consumer social-bias (e.g., consumer choices can be affected by others) [ 7 ]. However, understanding the global trends in advertising research within the neuromarketing field is still unclear in academic studies. In addition, to date, no investigation has determined the current neurophysiological and physiological techniques that have been used in studying the unconscious/subconscious responses of consumers toward advertising such as YouTube video scenes, TV ads, public health ads (antismoking), initiative ads (encouraging the use of seat belts in cars). To sum that, this study tries to analyse the extracted articles in depth, to provide a precise and concise conclusion. The contributions of this work are summarized as follows:

• Provides a profound evaluation of the current advertising research that has been used to investigate unconscious and subconscious consumer behaviour, such as emotional dimensions, perceptions, reward processes, and approach/withdrawal motivation toward advertising.
• Provides an overview of the current neurophysiological and physiological tools that were used in advertising within the neuromarketing context between 2009 and 2020.

In this vein, the current paper provides an inclusive overview of neuromarketing research and the current research objectives. Section two presents the methodology and data-collection process. Section three presents the growth of the publication, topics of interest and a thematic analysis. A discussion of the study’s findings is presented in Section four. Section five presents a concise conclusion and the implications of our work. Finally, Section six presents the limitations and future directions.

2. Materials and Methods

This review study is designed to select empirical articles from the Web of Science (WoS) database in advertising within the neuromarketing context, to fill the gap in the literature. The reason behind choosing the WoS database over Scopus is the availability of cleaner data, which means reducing the duplications as compared to the Scopus database; additionally, WoS includes publications in top-tier journals [ 20 ]. The first step was to follow the instructions of the PRISMA protocol to select the empirical articles which used neuroimaging and physiological tools to investigate consumer responses to advertising research within neuromarketing [ 21 ]. The reason behind the use of the PRISMA protocol to select the relevant articles for this study were that it has been widely used in social science and business to extract and select articles related to the study, for example, online learning [ 22 ], neuromarketing [ 23 ], and service and healthcare [ 24 , 25 ].

For the second step, we used the content analysis of selected empirical articles for this study. The above processes will provide us with a profound insight into the advancement in advertising research by identifying and analysing the general and specific areas. Additionally, providing us with a better understanding of advertising research that used neuroimaging and physiological tools/methods and which can be considered when we are conducting further research into advertising research. Therefore, the findings of this study provide a guide for new scholars who are interested in advertising research within a neuromarketing field.

Relevant empirical articles have been selected by using the following query applied to the title, abstract, and keywords: (((“neuromarketing” OR “consumer neuroscience”) AND (“advertising” OR “advertisement”) AND (neuroimaging OR physiological))). This study extracted 76 empirical articles relevant to this review paper from January 2009 to December 2020. This study focused on empirical journal-articles, in comparison to conferences and book chapters, which generally undergo a much more rigorous review process and therefore improve the credibility of published research in journals [ 26 ]. Figure 1 demonstrates the selection of articles processed for this study, as follows:

• Methods: neuroimaging and physiological tools;
• Publication year: January 2009 to December 2020;
• Language: English;
• Document type: original articles (chapters of books, articles from conferences, reviews, and proceedings books were excluded).

PRISMA protocol to extract empirical articles for this systematic study.

3.1. Growth of the Publication

Seventy-six articles were extracted from the WOS which used neuromarketing tools. According to the literature, McClure, et al. [ 19 ] published the first neuromarketing study in 2004, when they investigated the neural correlates of consumer behaviour (e.g., choice, decision-making) toward two brands (Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi Cola). However, the first investigation into advertising was carried out by Morris, et al. [ 27 ]. They found the gyri regions of the brain were highly related to pleasure/displeasure and high/low arousal. From January 2009 to December 2020, there was a fluctuation in the number of published articles in advertising. In 2020, it was the highest number of annual publications with thirteen articles, as depicted in Figure 2 .

By exploring the relevant articles to develop this review article, it was possible to classify the global academic-research trends and advancement in advertising and neuromarketing, as follows: (i) neuroimaging and physiological tools used in advertising; and (ii) consumers’ brain processes to be considered in advertising, such as emotions, motivation, reward process, attentions, perception, and memory. By reviewing the selected articles, we can enrich our understanding, to achieve the objectives of this study. Table 1 shows the summary of the neuroimaging and physiological tools that were used to investigate the brain processes of consumers toward advertising research.

Classifications of neuroimaging and physiological tools used in advertising research.

3.2. Topics of Interest and Thematic Analysis

3.2.1. neuroimaging and physiological tools used in advertising.

We found that the neural-response recording-tool most used in advertising was EEG. EEG is an electrical and also a non-invasive technique to gauge the unconscious/subconscious responses of consumers toward ads by recording the voltage changes of frequencies at scalp regions [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ]. According to [ 32 ], there are five frequency bands (e.g., delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma). The EEG tool uses a 10–20 global system, which is used to describe the electrode locations on the volunteer’s scalp, for example, (Fp), (F), (P), (O), (C), and (T) describe the prefrontal, frontal, parietal, occipital, central, and temporal, respectively. Moreover, it uses the same number of electrodes on both side of the volunteer’s head (i.e., right and left side) [ 33 , 34 ]. In addition, it has an excellent temporal accuracy (estimated in milliseconds (ms)) and a poor spatial accuracy (estimated at 1 cm 3 at the scalp regions) [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. In addition, it is not expensive or noisy [ 38 ]. fMRI and fNIRS are non-invasive, metabolic tools. Both are used to record oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin in the brain [ 39 , 40 ]. fMRI has a superior spatial accuracy (estimated at 1–10 mm 3 of the deep structure of the brain) compared with fNIRS, which has poor spatial accuracy (estimated at 4 cm of cortical-activity regions) [ 41 ]. Meanwhile, both have acceptable temporal accuracy (estimated in seconds) [ 42 , 43 ]. fMRI and fNIRS have been used in marketing research to record the subconscious/unconscious responses of consumers (e.g., preference, perceptions, purchase decisions, choices) toward marketing stimuli [ 41 , 43 , 44 ]. fNIRS is a portable, novel, promising, and silent neuroimaging technique, which is also cheaper than fMRI [ 39 , 45 , 46 ].

ET is a portable technique that is used to gauge physiological reactions such as eye movements, pupil dilation, saccade, and fixation toward the stimuli of marketing [ 18 ]. According to Hoffman [ 47 ], it is used for measuring eye movements and the attention of consumers, which is beneficial for psychology and neurological research. Eye fixations last between 200 and 350 ms while reading a text and watching video scenes, respectively, while 200 ms refers to the duration of saccadic eye-movements [ 48 ]. The set of fixations and saccades is named the scan route, and analyses visual perception and cognitive purpose [ 49 ]. Pupil dilation with a longer blink-period gives us better information about processing [ 18 ]. The GSR and ECG tools are used to gauge the emotional reactions of consumers toward ads [ 50 ]. For example, sweating level is recorded by the GSR tool and the heart rate/heartbeat is measured by the ECG tool [ 50 , 51 , 52 ]. In addition, both of them can measure the autonomic nervous system and evaluate the internal emotional status of consumers [ 53 ]. Therefore, GSR and ECG are convenient and reliable techniques for measuring the emotional status of consumers and changes in skin conductance, respectively [ 54 ]. IAT is able to identify the customers’ attitudes toward marketing stimuli such as brands or ads (e.g., like/dislike) by recording the reaction time of customers [ 18 ]. EMG is used to measure the reactions shown on individuals’ faces (e.g., pleasure/displeasure, …, etc.) toward advertising [ 55 ], because facial-expression analysis is significant for marketers and advertisers, because faces can provide beneficial information about perceptions of customers toward ads in terms of measuring visible and invisible facial-muscle reactions [ 29 ].

3.2.2. Brain Processes to Be Considered in Advertising

Emotion and feelings.

The feeling is a relatively conscious aspect of emotional status [ 56 ], which derives from individuals’ judgments such as level of pleasure or unpleasure toward advertising [ 31 ]; it is likely the best way to understand and explain the physiological responses of the consumer toward ads [ 31 , 57 ]. Many research studies have affirmed that ad-elicited feelings are strong indexes of consumers’ response toward advertising [ 58 ]. On the opposite side of the spectrum, emotion is an unconscious aspect of emotional status which correlates to an automatic somatic response such as increased heart beat in some conditions (fright, anger) [ 56 , 59 ], which is crucial for making decisions, learning, and solving problems [ 60 ]. Advertisers and marketers can use both in advertising to captivate consumers’ attention, thereby enhancing purchase intention. Emotions are accompanied with changes in the autonomic nervous system (i.e., zygomatic facial muscles, corrugator facial muscles, and heart-rate), which can provide rich information about the emotional status of consumers. Therefore, the study of emotions has attracted many researchers and advertisers [ 61 ].

Emotion is constructed from a neural network in the brain, which performs basic psychological activities/functions (e.g., memory, perception, salience detection) [ 62 ]. Therefore, emotion is defined as the set of changes in the individual’s physiological and subconscious and unconscious responses, based on the individual’s experiences [ 63 , 64 ]. In addition, emotion is a relationship between humans and the environment, including multiple subcomponents (e.g., physiological, behavioural, appraisal, and expression [ 65 ]. The cognitive and neurological frameworks of the role of emotion in decision-making has been investigated more through Damasio’s theory, which is also known as the somatic marker hypothesis [ 66 , 67 ]. Consequently, researchers have agreed on two dimensions for measuring emotional responses toward stimuli: (i) valence/balance (i.e., pleasure or displeasure, depression or excitement), (ii) arousal (e.g., high or low) ( Figure 3 ) [ 28 , 68 , 69 ]. Figure 3 shows that the valence indicates either positive or negative emotional-status which is evoked by external stimuli such as advertising. In addition, valence is measured from the positive to the negative side. On the other side of the spectrum, arousal indicates the level of excitement; whether high or low, it is measured from high to low levels [ 68 , 70 , 71 ].

Dimensions model of emotions [ 68 ].

Table 2 shows several methods to measure emotions and feelings toward marketing stimuli. Previous studies have used, for example, self-report and physiological methods to analyse the emotional responses of consumers toward advertising [ 72 ]. For example, the EMG and self-report investigation of Lajante, et al. [ 73 ] gauge the consumer’s pleasure/displeasure toward advertisements. The findings of the experiment revealed that pleasure/displeasure had positively impacted the attitudes of customers toward advertisements. The ECG, EDA, and questionnaire study of Baraybar-Fernández, et al. [ 50 ] found that audio and visual ads with sad messages have more influence on participants. Barquero-Pérez, et al. [ 53 ] used the ECG, EDA and questionnaire in their experiment. They found that each type of ad generated a different emotion, such as surprise, anger, and so forth. In addition, physiological tools have been used to investigate the effectiveness of online advertising (e.g., YouTube) [ 51 ]. For example, Guixeres, et al. [ 51 ] used brain response, ECG, and ET to investigate the relationship between ad effectiveness and the number of views on YouTube. They found that there is a solid relationship between ad effectiveness and the number of views on YouTube. Herrador, et al. [ 74 ] conducted an EDA experiment and the findings revealed that both groups of participants (male and female) indicated a strong initial activation; moreover, they noticed a reduced activation during the most significant part of video material in the male group. Venkatraman, et al. [ 28 ] used several neuromarketing tools to evaluate participant’ responses to a 30-second TV advertisement. The findings revealed that the activity in the ventral striatum could be the predictor of response to advertising. Grigaliunaite and Pileliene [ 75 ] conducted an experiment by using ET and they found that emotional and rational advertising appeals influence consumers’ responses in various ways. The IAT and ET investigation of Pileliene and Grigaliunaite [ 76 ] found that warm-colour temperature attracts more visual attention to the advertisement; thereby generating a positive implicit attitude and inducing the buying intentions toward the advertised product, compared with cool-colour temperature advertisements, whether the spokesperson is a female or male celebrity. Similarly, Grigaliunaite and Pileliene [ 77 ] found that negative smoking images reflected a negative implicit attitude/behaviour of individuals toward those images and smoking behaviour, increasing the influence on individuals’ intention to whether to quit or not to start smoking. The ERP, ET, and questionnaire investigation of Pileliene and Grigaliunaite [ 78 ] found that a well-known female spokesperson has a significant impact on the effectiveness of fast-moving consumer-goods advertising.

Neuromarketing tools to measure emotions and feelings.

There has been an interesting growth in understanding the non-verbal responses of emotional status toward advertising by using neuroscience methods such as fMRI, EEG, fNIRS [ 31 , 51 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 ]. For example, Plichta, et al. [ 45 ] conducted an fNIRS experiment to investigate the detection of sensory activity by measuring emotional signals in the auditory field. The findings revealed that pleasurable/unpleasurable sounds increased the activity in the auditory cortex, compared to neutral sounds. Gier, et al. [ 41 ] conducted the fNIRS experiment to explore whether the fNIRS tool had the ability to predict the success of point-of-sale elements by measuring the neural signals of brain regions such as the dlPFC. The findings revealed that the fNIRS has the ability to predict the success elements at the point of sale, relying on the cortical-activity effect.

The EEG investigations of Vecchiato, et al. [ 83 ], and Vecchiato, et al. [ 84 ] found that activity in the right frontal alpha is associated with pleasure/liking ads, while the left frontal alpha correlated to displeasure/disliking ads. Additionally, Vecchiato, et al. [ 85 ] found that there were gender (i.e., male and female) differences in interest toward commercial categories and scenes in two ads. The EEG experiment of Harris, et al. [ 86 ] found that emotional advertisements are more effective than rational advertisements, which leads to a positive change in decision-making, inducing donation, and liking. The findings of Chen, et al. [ 87 ] revealed that e-cigarette ads increased the smoking desire; additionally, e-cigarette ads increased activity in the left middle-frontal-gyrus, the right medial-frontal-gyrus, the right parahippocampus, the left insula, the left lingual gyrus/fusiform gyrus, the right inferior-parietal-lobule, the left posterior-cingulate, and the left angular-gyrus. Wang, et al. [ 88 ] and Royo González, et al. [ 89 ] found that the narrative approach of ads and exposure to branding products have a favourable influence on the consumers’ preferences and excitement. The fMRI investigations of Morris, et al. [ 27 ] and Shen and Morris [ 90 ] found that pleasure and displeasure are correlated with more activity in the inferior frontal- and middle temporal-gyrus, respectively, while low and high arousal is associated with the right superior-temporal- and right middle-frontal-gyrus, consecutively. Leanza [ 91 ] used EEG and found that some of the emotive features of the virtual reality (VR) experience significantly influenced consumers’ preferences. Ramsoy, et al. [ 92 ] found that arousal and cognitive load were highly connected to subsequently stated travel-preferences; moreover, consumers’ subconscious emotional and cognitive responses are not identical to subjective travel-preference. Shestyuk, et al. [ 93 ] found that the EEG is a convenient tool to predict the success of TV programs and determine cognitive processes. Wang, et al. [ 94 ] conducted an experiment to propose a generative-design method using EEG measurements. The findings revealed that the product image that was generated with preference EEG-signals had more preference than the product image generated without preference EEG-signals. Kim, et al. [ 95 ] conducted an experiment to identify the effect of visual art (e.g., Mondrian’s and Kandinsky’s artworks) on consumers’ preferences, by using EEG. The findings showed that the visual effects induced high emotional arousal, which might promote heuristic decision-making. Mengual-Recuerda, et al. [ 96 ] found that food served by a chef positively influences emotions, while dishes with special presentations attract more attention than traditional dishes. The EEG study of Eijlers, et al. [ 31 ] found that arousal is positively connected to prominent ads in the wider population and negatively to consumer attitudes toward these ads.

According to Lang and Bradley [ 97 ], emotions and motivation processes are highly intersected and correlated. Chiew and Braver [ 98 ] and Pessoa [ 99 ] found that cognition and consumers’ behaviours are highly affected by motivational processes. For example, positive motivational stimuli will urge individuals toward achieving goals (e.g., obtain or predict a reward by performing a task correctly) [ 100 ], while negative motivational stimuli can lead to distraction [ 101 ].

Pessoa [ 102 ] and Raymond [ 103 ] suggested that motivational processes are a compass of consumers’ attitudes toward external stimuli to engage with the environment and achieve goals. Higgins [ 104 ] suggested two dimensions for measuring motivational processes such as withdrawal and approach attitudes. Researchers and practitioners attempted to investigate the neural responses of motivational processes to better understand consumers’ behaviours toward advertisements and products [ 83 ]. For example, Cherubino, et al. [ 105 ] carried out an experiment using EEG to investigate the relationship between the PFC and motivational dimensions. The findings revealed that the PFC is related to motivational dimensions, wherein the right PFC correlated to withdrawal attitudes and the left PFC related to approach attitudes. The EEG investigations of Pozharliev, et al. [ 106 ] and Zhang, et al. [ 107 ] recorded the brain responses of subjects toward luxury products (motivations). The findings showed that social motivations have a vital role in influencing the purchase of luxury products in order to satisfy social goals (at least one goal). The EEG investigation of Bosshard, et al. [ 108 ] found that liked brands reflect more motivational aspects and activity signals in the right parietal-cortices than disliked brands.

Therefore, there is a strong relationship between the activation of the PFC and motivational dimensions toward marketing stimuli such as advertisements [ 109 ]. Therefore, marketing researchers and practitioners have to focus on the motivational processes of consumers to orient the marketing mix (e.g., target-appropriate audiences and markets, increasing the effectiveness of ads and products) [ 110 ]. According to previous studies, NM research has used the approach/withdrawal attitude to evaluate TV ads [ 111 ]. Therefore, approach/withdrawal motivational attitudes are highly significant for marketing and advertising research.

Reward Processing

According to the literature, it is highly significant for researchers and practitioners to study and know the neural responses that are responsible for reward processing, such as money, food, and social activities [ 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 ]. This is because the positive rewards such as gaining money, foods, or other types of rewards, enhance the accuracy and cognitive task [ 116 , 117 , 118 ] through modifying the early attentional process. Anderson, et al. [ 101 ] demonstrated that visual features (e.g., product design) that are correlated to reward, will make the consumer prioritize, therefore attracting the consumer’s attention automatically. For example, the design preference of a product or brand can increase the activity in the regions which are responsible for reward processing, thereby, causing more activation in regions of motivations that might impact consumers’ purchase decisions [ 29 ]. Many studies concentrated on the individual’s response toward a monetary reward by studying the approach/avoidance attitude [ 112 , 113 ]. For example, Bechara, et al. [ 119 ] carried out an experiment named the “Iowa Gambling Task” by using GSR to investigate the influence of reward on decision-making. They divided participants into two groups, the healthy group and the group with lesions in the vmPFC. The findings revealed that healthy participants sweated more, which led them to infer that participants had a negative emotional experience toward picking up cards from a monetary losing deck; meanwhile, the lesion group picked up cards regardless of whether they were cards with monetary wins or losses. Consequently, reward highly influenced decision-making [ 112 , 120 , 121 ].

Many researchers have confirmed that the importance of the striatum activity in reward processing, wherein the components of the striatum such as the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and putamen play a central role in expectation and evaluation of reward [ 115 , 122 , 123 ]. For example, Galvan [ 124 ] and Geier, et al. [ 125 ] carried out an experiment to investigate the relationship between reward processing and the striatum. Their findings revealed that the ventral striatum (VS) has a key role in the prediction of reward. Jung, et al. [ 126 ] found that the rewards, memory, semantics, and attention regions in the brain were lit up when viewing a combination of a celebrity face and a car, compared with viewing a combination of a non-celebrity face and a car. In addition, car favourableness correlated positively with activation in the left anterior-insula, left OFC, and left higher-order visual cortex in the OL. Padmanabhan, et al. [ 127 ] investigated the influence of the reward system on attention processes. Their findings showed that incentives facilitate cognitive control. Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that rewards activate the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum [ 128 , 129 , 130 ]. The ventral striatum has been discussed before as a part of the reward system [ 131 ]. Therefore, findings suggest that neurodevelopmental changes in the striatum systems may contribute to changes in how reward influences attentional processes [ 56 ].

Attention is defined as the way “people tend to seek, accept and consume the messages that meet their interests, beliefs, values, expectations and ideas, and overlook the messages that are incompatible with this system” [ 132 ]. It has also been defined as selective perception [ 133 ]. Selective perception is associated with filtering out information and concentrating on significant information (e.g., different aspects of stimulus or different stimuli) [ 134 ]. For instance, consumers are exposed to nearly 10 million bits of visual information (e.g., ads, images, sound, video, and colour) per second through their senses (e.g., eyes, ears, skin) daily. Most input information goes by unnoticed, with consumers able to process almost 40 bits of input information per second [ 29 , 135 ]. This lead us to infer that attention has a strong influence on consumer behaviour in how consumers represent, perceive and process information and thus select and prioritize information. Attentional and emotional processes are relatively intersected/connected, and emotion is considered a reliable and effective source for attracting consumers ’ attention [ 136 , 137 ]. For example, the activation in the amygdala (AMY) and cingulate cortex (CC) in the brain is related to emotional stimuli.

Attention is a significant brain process, which has a central role in measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns; thereby, it is an indicator of consumer’s behaviour and the effectiveness of advertising [ 138 ]. According to the literature, the majority of researchers have agreed on two systems to measure attention toward advertising: (i) bottom-up, and (ii) top-down, systems [ 28 , 139 , 140 ]. Bottom-up (visual saliency/exogenous/ involuntary) attention is the type of attentional system which is initiated by external stimuli such as colour, voice, promotion, faces, text, novelty, brightness, and so forth, which lead to a process in which information in external stimuli is received automatically. Top-down (goal-driven/endogenous/voluntary) attention is the other type of attentional system, which is initiated by internal and external goals and expectation; thereby, it is necessary to focus all your mental power toward the goal that you are looking to achieve, thereby filtering goals to achieve your goals ( Figure 4 ) [ 2 , 140 , 141 ].

The bottom-up and top-down attention processes [ 59 ].

For this reason, the underlying brain reactions of attention and visual processing are highly interesting for advertising. Moreover, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is highly related to the function of top-down and bottom-up attentional systems [ 142 , 143 ]. For example, Smith and Gevins [ 144 ] found that the occipital lobe (OL) is associated with attentional processes toward TV advertisements. The EEG investigation of Kong, et al. [ 145 ] found that variation in activity in the cerebral hemisphere related to the cognitive task can help to determine the success or lack of success of the advertisement. A recent fMRI investigation by Casado-Aranda, et al. [ 146 ] found that the correspondence between advertising and gender voice (male, female) induces attention regions in the brain. Ananos [ 147 ] carried out experiment using ET to investigate the attention level and processing of information in advertising (content recognition) among elderly and young people groups. Their findings revealed that the attention level among both groups was the same, but recognition by the young-people group was higher than that of the elderly-people group for untraditional advertising. Guixeres, et al. [ 51 ] conducted an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of an ad (e.g., a recall ad) and the number of views on YouTube channels, using neural networks and neuroscience-based metrics (e.g., brain response, ECG, and ET). Their findings suggest an important relationship between neuroscience metrics and self-report of ad effectiveness (e.g., recall ad) and the number of views on YouTube. Cuesta-Cambra, et al. [ 148 ] investigated how information is processed and learned and how visual attention takes place. Their findings indicated that the visual activity of men has different patterns from women, and does not influence subsequent recall, wherein recall relies on the emotional value of ads and simplicity, while complex ads need more visual fixation and are therefore hard to remember. In addition, the importance of the playful component of memory and low-involvement processing were confirmed by EEG. Treleaven-Hassard, et al. [ 149 ] examined the engagement of the consumer with interactive TV ads with a particular brand’s logo compared with non-interactive TV ads. The findings revealed that brands linked with interactive ads attract more automatic attention. Boscolo, et al. [ 81 ] conducted an experiment using ET and questionnaires to investigate differences in the visual attention between genders (male and female), toward print ads. Their findings revealed that there is difference in visual attention in the case of male, while no differences were noticed in the case of females.

According to Simson [ 150 ], studies into the perception of value and how it is formed reflect what is known in marketing theory, wherein the marketing-mix elements can be changed to influence the perceived value of a product. However, studies on how attention systems impact consumers ’ perception and actions have been limited to consumer report and behavioural studies, which depend on a rational report; this is not enough to explain attention processes, wherein there are two attentional systems influencing consumers’ perceptions (e.g., top-down and bottom-up attention system) ( Figure 5 ) [ 59 ]. Consumer perception is the first step in engagement with marketing stimuli or any other stimuli in the environment [ 151 ]. Hogg, et al. [ 152 ] defined perception as “the process by which marketing stimuli are selected, organised, and interpreted”. Therefore, individuals add meaning and interpret it in a certain way, which leads to the perceptions of the individual’s findings for each one. As stated by Belch and Belch [ 153 ] perception processing is extremely reliant on internal processes such as prior knowledge (experiences), current goals, beliefs, expectations, needs, and moods, and also external stimuli such as colour, orientation, intensity, and movement [ 59 ]. Although this explains the process of how consumer perceptions are formed, the exact the part concerning the explanation of sensations and the internal and unique assignation of meaning to sensations is what lies concealed, and remains unexplained in detail in the current consumer-behaviour literature. However, it is widely believed that this process is driven by the unconscious.

Two attentional systems impact the consumers’ perceptions.

Cartocci, et al. [ 154 ] and Modica, et al. [ 155 ] conducted experiments to estimate the accuracy measurement of the cerebral and emotional perception of social advertising campaigns (i.e., antismoking) using several methods such as EEG, GSR, and ECG. The findings showed that the antismoking campaign which was characterized by a symbolic communication style gained the highest approach-values, as evaluated by the approach/withdrawal index. Meanwhile, an image based on “fear-arousing appeal” and with a narrative style reported the highest and lowest effort-values index, respectively. The fMRI investigation of Falk, et al. [ 156 ] predicted the out-of-sample (population) effectiveness of quit-smoking ads. The findings revealed that activity in the prior mPFC was largely predictive of the success of various advertising campaigns in the real world. Plassmann, et al. [ 157 ] carried out an experiment to study the perception of pleasantness in the taste of wines, using the fMRI tool. Their findings showed a stronger activation in the medial OFC (mOFC) regions in the brain when subjects believed they are drinking expensive wine, showing that the mOFC is responsible for experiencing pleasantness. This led to infer that the pleasantness report was correlated with perceived value and price of product more than taste itself. Neuroscientists have found that the OFC and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are involved in decision-making, through the perceived value of products [ 158 ]. Nuñez-Gomez, et al. [ 159 ] carried out an experiment using EEG to examine how advertising material is perceived by two groups (e.g., healthy group and group with Asperger syndrome). The findings revealed that there are large difference between these groups in their perception of emotion and their attention variables. Gong, et al. [ 160 ] carried out an experiment to identify the influence of sales promotion (e.g., gift-giving, discount) on the perception of consumers and purchase decisions by using EEG/ERP. The findings revealed that discount promotions have more impact on purchase decisions than gift-giving sales promotions.

Memory is defined as an ongoing learning-process, which has input and output functions in the brain [ 161 , 162 ]. The input function encodes information, while the output function retrieves information, and this is very important for advertising research [ 137 , 163 ]. For example, recall and recognition advertising-information is a retrieving function [ 28 ]. Myers and DeWall [ 162 ] and Atkinson and Shiffrin [ 163 ] presented the multistore model of memory, which includes three steps, as follows: (i) a sensory memory, (ii) short-term memory (STM), and (iii) long-term memory (LTM) ( Figure 6 ) [ 164 ]. Brain processes related to memory have revealed certain valuable outcomes, as to the factors which influence the consumers’ behaviour ,such as recall- and recognition-advertising [ 165 ]. Input and output functions in the memory are highly important for marketers and advertisers, due to each function having an awareness and unawareness aspect in the brain [ 137 , 166 ]. Memory and emotion are highly connected to each other. For example, previous studies confirmed that the emotional events are usually remembered more than neutral events, and especially if emotions correspond to events at that moment [ 167 ].

The information phases in the memory’s stages [ 164 ].

The memory process has been widely studied, and it has concluded that the hippocampus (HC), located in the temporal lobe (TL), plays a major role in generating and processing memories [ 165 ]. Additionally, activation of the HC has a strong relationship with LTM and STM, which highly impacts consumers’ purchase decisions [ 168 , 169 ]. In addition, the AMY is located next and close to the HC, which is significant for the memory system [ 165 ]. For example, the EEG investigation by Rossiter, et al. [ 170 ] found that the left hemisphere is correlated with encoding in the LTM. Similarly, the EEG investigations by Astolfi, et al. [ 171 ] used EEG to determine the brain regions that were triggered by the successful memory-encoding of TV ads. They found stronger activity in the cortical regions. Morey [ 172 ] investigated the impact of advertising message on recognition memory. The findings revealed stronger activity in the gamma band, which directly affected memory. The fMRI investigation by Bakalash and Riemer [ 173 ] and Seelig, et al. [ 174 ] measured the brain regions of memory ads. The findings revealed that stronger activity in the amygdala (AMY) and frontotemporal regions is associated with memorable and unmemorable ads. Similarly, [ 175 ] carried out experiments to investigate the content of ads and the activity of frontal regions and memory. The findings showed that the content of ads increased the activity in the frontal regions and the input function (encoding) of memory.

The study of these mental processes such as emotion and feelings, attention, memory, reward processing, motivation, and perception are highly important considerations for advertising research.

4. Discussion

A total of 76 articles were extracted and analysed, wherein the content analysis of the relevant articles revealed that the annual and the accumulative number of publications has been growing since 2009, reaching its peak in 2020 with twelve empirical articles that used neuroimaging, physiological, and self-report techniques to study the consumers’ brain processes such as, but not limited to, emotions toward the stimuli of marketing such as advertising. We followed the PRISMA protocol to select the relevant empirical articles for this study as brain processes such as emotions, feelings, motivation, reward, attention, and memory need to be considered in advertising research. The findings of the study revealed that the neuroimaging tool that is used most in studying the brain processes of consumers is the EEG, with 38 empirical articles, followed by the fMRI with 20 articles; it was also noticed that only four articles used the fNIRS tool in neuromarketing research. In addition, for physiological tools, it was observed that five techniques were used in neuromarketing studies to investigate consumer responses toward the stimuli of marketing such as advertising. The ET was used in 14 articles alongside neuroimaging tools such as EEG, wherein ET is the most used tool, followed by GSR with 12 articles; it was also used alongside other physiological tools such as ECG and EMG. Finally, self-report (i.e., surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observation) was used in seven articles.

This study found that the brain processes to be considered most in advertising research are emotions, feelings, attention, memory, perception, approach/withdrawal motivation, and reward processing. The findings demonstrated that the strongest activity in the inferior-frontal- and middle-temporal-gyri are associated with pleasure and displeasure, while the activity in the right superior-temporal and the right middle-frontal-gyrus correlated with high or low arousal [ 90 ]. As well as this, we found the OL connected with the attention system [ 144 ], and the HC, located in the temporal lobe (TL), plays a major role in generating and processing memories [ 165 ]. In addition, the VS, which is located in the basal ganglia plays a central role in the reward system; for example, the key functions of VS (i.e., control movement and planning) have a vital role in the reward system, while the components of VS such as the putamen, caudate nucleus, and nucleus accumbens (NAcc) have a central role in the assessment of consumer expectations, compared to the actual reward received [ 123 ]. In addition, the ventral tegmental region is considered a part of the reward system, which passes the neurotransmitter dopamine to other brain areas, thereby affecting goal-seeking behaviour [ 123 ]. For motivation, it was found that the anterior cerebral hemispheres play a central role in withdrawal and approach motivation; for example, the increase in activation in the right PFC is linked to withdrawal behaviour, while the increase in activation in the left PFC is associated with approach behaviour [ 105 , 176 ]. Finally, in accordance with the literature, it was found that the OFC and vmPFC regions play vital roles in perception (i.e., perceived value) [ 158 ].

5. Conclusions and Implications

Implication of the research findings for theory and practice: Theoretically, the current findings can be divided into three areas, as follows: firstly, neuroscientific techniques and methods enable the capture/measurement of the activity signals of the brain and body relating to consumers’ responses (e.g., emotions and feelings, attention, memory, perception, reward processing, and motivation) toward advertising campaigns. For example, neuroimaging tools (e.g., fMRI, EEG/ERP, fNIRS) enable the recording of the neural signals of the mental responses (e.g., pleasure/displeasure, low/high arousal, advertising recall and recognition) toward advertising, which can be beneficial for advertisers and marketers in creating more effective advertising campaigns to attract, captivate, and impact consumers. Meanwhile, physiological tools (e.g., ET, GSR, EMG, and ECG) enable researchers to gauge the physiological reactions of the consumer, such as pupil dilation, fixation, eye movements, saccade, heart rate, blood pressure, sweating level, and reaction time toward advertising. Secondly, neuroimaging and physiological tools will help advertisers and scholars to identify the weak elements in advertising which lead to withdrawal behaviour and to address these, besides identifying the strengths which lead to approach behaviour, and to enhance them. Thirdly, many articles have concentrated on detecting the neural and physiological responses of emotions, feelings, attention, memory, reward processing, motivation and perception toward advertising such as the presenter’s features (i.e., celebrity), because these processes play a key role in the decision-making of consumers (i.e., purchasing decisions). Additionally, some advertising research concentrated on gender voice (i.e., male, female), ads appeal, faces of celebrity, social campaigns (i.e., using seat belts in the car), and public health (i.e., anti-smoking campaigns). These areas can provide a reasonable explanation of the neural and physiological correlates of emotions and feelings (e.g., pleasure/displeasure, high/low arousal), attention (e.g., top-down, bottom-up), memory (e.g., encoding, retrieving), motivation (e.g., approach/withdrawal), reward processing, and perception (e.g., perceived value of ads) to be considered in advertising research. Thus, an application of this research perhaps offers reasonable explanations of how advertising works in consumers’ minds, and the relationship between the neural correlates of consumers’ brain and physiological responses toward advertising, thereby better understanding consumers’ behaviour, which leads to the creation of more attractive advertising for political, social and business sectors.

General Conclusion : Neuromarketing is a promising field, not only to study and solve the commercial issues such as the weaknesses of advertising campaigns and to reduce the wastage of advertising budgets, but also to create more effective advertising campaigns in social, political, and public-health sectors, in order to increase human awareness. In today’s hyper-competitive environments among advertising agencies, each agency seeks to find the most beneficial methods to beat competitors and be the first priorities in the consumer’s mind. Thus, advertisers have adopted neuroscientific methods in their research to study, analyse, and predict the neural and physiological responses of consumers toward the stimuli of marketing (i.e., advertising), thereby identifying the most important mental and physiological responses to be considered in advertising research to raise advertising effectiveness. Most studies in advertising research have determined the main mental processes of interest for advertising research, such as emotions and feelings, attention, memory, reward processing, motivation, and perception.

The findings of the study suggest that neuroscientific methods and techniques are significant to gauge the brain and physiological reactions of consumers toward the stimuli of marketing, such as advertising research. For example, neuroimaging tools are able to gauge the neural-activity signals of the consumer’s brain. At the same time, physiological tools can gauge physiological reactions such as eye movements, sweating level, and fixation.

6. Limitations and Future Directions

This paper tried to minimize the limitations in methodology; however, some limitations occurred and provided several directions for further research. This research concentrated on the English articles that were published in open-access journals from 2009 to 2020 and were listed in the WOS database. Therefore, this paper overlooked non-English articles, non-open-access articles, and other documents such as books, review papers, conference proceedings, and so forth. Thus, this paper is not free of bias. For future directions, we hope to overcome the obstacles in the future, which include the cost of research and techniques, lack of labs and facilities, use of time (e.g., data interpretation, recruiting participants, and so forth), and increased investment and funding in neuromarketing research and technique [ 177 ]. We encourage researchers and marketers from emerging countries to enter this embryonic field and leave their footprint by publishing articles for future works. In addition, we suggest that researchers and scholars identify the influence of advertising on consumers persuasion, engagement, and excitement, as well as the contributions of neuromarketing research to various domains (e.g., social sciences, public health, politics, and stock exchanges). We believe that this review study provides a profound overview of the global academic-trends in neuromarketing research, using the neuroimaging and physiological studies in advertising to study the brain processes of consumers. Thus, it provides valuable and reliable insights into the appropriate brain processes to be considered in future research.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS); Taif University, Department of Economic & Finance, College of Business Administration; and Applied Science Private University (ASU), Department of Marketing for supporting this study.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

A.H.A., conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft preparation, result discussion, and data curation; N.Z.M.S., supervision, review and editing; S.A.A.-Z., review, editing, and methodology; A.K., review and results discussion. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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April Fools’ Day was really something back in the day, these 3 California pranks show

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Good morning. It’s Monday, April 1 . Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

• Remember these classic California pranks?
• Easter weekend storms brought snow and flooding .
• California wine growers struggle amid a global glut .
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April Fools! Here are 3 classic California pranks

Full disclosure: I’m not a big fan of April Fools’ Day pranks orchestrated by local governments, corporations or, worst of all, news organizations. Rarely do they hit the right tone and level of inventiveness to actually be funny.

Companies announcing name changes or bankruptcies ? Yawn.

Sure, plenty are harmless. Cities love to put their amateur Photoshop skills to work or fire off a social media post for some low-stakes tomfoolery. Cool, whatever.

In an age of fake news, increasingly convincing AI-generated imagery, and brands chasing every conceivable trend, April Fools’ Day floods the attention market with forgettable-at-best, tasteless-at-worst content that carries a one-day shelf life.

But it wasn’t always this boring. Some ingenious pranks of the past — and some arguably over-the-line — actually got people out of the house or riled up enough to call the government.

Here are a few California-based pranks that went above and beyond (or maybe too far?) on April Fools’ Day.

The San Diego space shuttle landing

In 1993, hundreds of San Diegans rushed to a small airport in the morning, hoping to witness an event very few get to see in real life: a space shuttle landing.

Because of a systems malfunction at Edwards Air Force Base, space shuttle Discovery was being diverted to touch down at San Diego’s Montgomery Field. Or so they’d been led to believe by a local radio station. But of course, no space shuttle was landing. There weren’t even any in orbit at the time.

The elaborate hoax was orchestrated by KGB-FM, which aired an interview with a faux NASA spokesperson to confirm Discovery was en route. Radio listeners even thought they were patched in with the shuttle crew at one point.

The ruse was believed to bring more than 1,000 people to the area, tying up traffic for hours. The airport manager had to explain to hundreds of angry would-be onlookers that they’d been had. The city’s Police Department threatened legal action for the chaos.

The whole saga was summarized well in this local TV news package .

Surely some people were peeved, but those interviewed by CBS 8 at the time seemed to take it in stride and appreciate the elaborate hoax, even if it created traffic issues and tied up some police resources for a nonexistent event.

Monkeying around with L.A. Zoo phone operators

Prank phone calls often feel like a remnant from a bygone era. (Do kids these days even know what *67 does?) Which is why this 1986 story I found in the L.A. Times archives struck me as equal parts nostalgic, delightful and wholesome.

Back in those days, when April 1 rolled around, the switchboard operators at the Los Angeles Zoo were inundated with calls. The people on the other end of the line asked if Ellie Font or Al Gator were available. Or they were returning calls from G. Raffe or Ryna Soris.

“Every April 1 it is the same,” former Times reporter Penelope McMillan wrote . “The phone at the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park doesn’t stop ringing.”

For many of these calls, the zoo operators were merely a conduit for someone else’s prank. The likely scenario: Some practical joker left a message for a friend as, say, Mr. Wolf, then provided the zoo’s digits as the callback number.

“It’s crazy, absolutely crazy,” zoo spokesperson Lorri Cohen said at the time. “Several zoos around the country actually close down their switchboards April 1 rather than deal with it, and we considered that. Then we decided we may as well make the best of it.”

Adding to the confusion was the fact that several zoo staffers at that time actually had animal-related names, including Ruth Baer, Bob Wolf and Ralph Crane.

It’s unclear whether this tradition is still common in an era of automated phone menus, but kudos to those pre-internet pranksters for having their fun without the ability to share it further than their landline phone cords could stretch.

The ‘Taco Liberty Bell’

Last but most audacious is a stunt that may still hold the trophy for best corporate April Fools’ Day prank ever.

Taco Bell was behind this 1996 ruse, which created a national uproar. But the “ Mexican-inspired ” fast-food chain was founded and is currently headquartered in Southern California, so we’ll allow it.

The company took out a full-page ad in several major newspapers announcing it had bought the Liberty Bell to help reduce the national debt.

“It will now be called the ‘Taco Liberty Bell’ and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing,” the ad read. “While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country’s debt.”

People flipped out . Some radio talk show hosts bought it and spread it to listeners. A Clinton press secretary even joked about it to reporters .

The National Park Service, which maintains the Liberty Bell, received hundreds of angry calls and had to assure the public it had not sold off one of the nation’s treasures.

The stunt might have broken the internet, had most people actually used it back then. Only about 8% of the population was on ye olde World Wide Web at the time.

A Taco Bell spokesperson later apologized to “those people who didn’t get the joke.”

Pranks in the April Fools’ Day spirit sure hit differently back then. So as you go about your day, check your back for a “Kick me” sign, take any major brand announcements with a barrel-full of salt, and crank up the Who for good measure .

Today’s top stories

Policy and power

• How did L.A.’s “mansion tax” do in its first year? Some call it a godsend; others an absolute disaster.
• The census is changing its categories on race and ethnicity. Here’s what that means for Latinos .
• Newsom has approved three California prison closures but is resisting pressure to shutter more .

Crime and public safety

• Sheriff’s deputies fatally shot a man they said drove a van toward officers in East L.A.
• An Oxnard personal trainer was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault of a student .
• So much for the scenic route. Part of Highway 1 near Big Sur crumbled as a new landslide closed more of the historic roadway.

SoCal sports

• Motivated by his move to shortstop, Dodgers veteran Mookie Betts is on a tear .
• Dylan Hernández: Forget the loss. Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto has proved he can pitch in the MLB .
• JuJu vs. Paige? No, it’s USC vs. UConn in the Elite Eight .
• The Ducks couldn’t overcome a late goal by Dakota Joshua in a loss to the Canucks .

More big stories

• Easter weekend storms brought fresh snow to the mountains and flooding to parts of Santa Barbara, Ventura and L.A. counties .
• L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum will reopen , but does Center Theatre Group have a sustainable path forward?
• Powerful unions allege schools are misusing arts education money and demand state intervention.
• How to watch the solar eclipse from California — and avoid heartbreak if chasing ‘totality.’
• Convoys are helping to move stranded travelers after Highway 1 landslide near Big Sur.

Get unlimited access to the Los Angeles Times. Subscribe here .

Commentary and opinions

• Mark Z. Barabak: Justice is finally coming to some of the liars and cheats who enabled Trump .
• Doyle McManus: Trump loves fossil fuels; California wants clean energy. Cue collision .
• George Skelton: Primary election no-shows in California are a warning to Biden .
• Times editorial board: At long last, women finally have a real shot at California’s top job .
• David Zirin: Here’s why California should continue to hold the line against sports betting .
• Times editorial board: John Eastman tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election . Of course he should be disbarred.

Today’s great read

Global wine glut compounds headaches for struggling California vineyards . Wildfires, years of drought and global warming have plagued California vineyards, but that’s only part of the problem. “More recently,” Times reporter Louis Sahagún wrote this week, “a tectonic shift in generational drinking habits has led to a global glut of wine.”

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected] .

For your downtime

• 🧺 Looking for the best underground bands in L.A.? Head to this Highland Park laundromat .
• 🍔 A new month brings a new list of places to eat and drink in L.A.
• 🐈‍⬛ ‘The Matrix’ turned 25 yesterday. 🐈‍⬛ Why not re-watch the pop culture milestone, then read Times contributor Manuel Betancourt’s ode to the film and its prescient message about AI ?
• 📺 Actor Giancarlo Esposito is used to playing the villain. In “Parish,” he steps into the antihero role .
• ✏️ Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games .

And finally ... a great photo

Show us your favorite place in California! We’re running low on submissions. Send us photos that scream California and we may feature them in an edition of Essential California.

Keep your distance! Today’s great photo is from Times photojournalist Christina House . She tagged along with William Hayes, a research biologist at Loma Linda University and expert on Southern California rattlesnakes, during a recent search for rattlers . You can almost hear this photo, right?

Have a great day, from the Essential California team Ryan Fonseca, reporter Amy Hubbard, deputy editor, Fast Break

Check our top stories , topics and the latest articles on latimes.com .

Ryan Fonseca writes the Los Angeles Times’ Essential California newsletter. A lifelong SoCal native, he has worked in a diverse mix of newsrooms across L.A. County, including radio, documentary, print and television outlets. Most recently, he was an associate editor for LAist.com and KPCC-FM (89.3) public radio, covering transportation and mobility. He returns to The Times after previously working as an assistant web editor for Times Community News, where he helped manage the websites and social media presence of the Burbank Leader, Glendale News-Press and La Cañada Valley Sun. Fonseca studied journalism at Cal State Northridge, where he now teaches the next generation of journalists to develop their voice and digital skills.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Opinion: Heat pumps cut costs and pollution. So why isn’t it easier to install one in California?

Opinion: A deadly but curable disease is thriving in L.A.’s jails. That’s unacceptable

California city council meetings stir up heated debate over calls for Gaza cease-fire

California is building fewer homes. The state could get even more expensive

India's Top Yoga Guru Faces Judges' Ire in Misleading Ads Case

India's Top Yoga Guru Faces Judges' Ire in Misleading Ads Case

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev performs yoga at a four-day long camp ahead of International Yoga Day in Ahmedabad, India June 18, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave/ File photo

By Shivam Patel

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's top court on Tuesday warned the nation's most popular yoga guru and his company of stern legal action for not complying with its directive to stop advertisements saying traditional ayurvedic medicines can fully cure some diseases.

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, dressed in a saffron-coloured robe, and his co-founder Acharya Balkrishna were present in the Supreme Court when the judges issued their warning in contempt proceedings against their firm Patanjali Ayurved, which sells hugely popular ayurvedic medicines.

The case relates to the Indian Medical Association's allegations that Patanjali disparages conventional medicines and continued publishing ads that said traditional medicines offered a "permanent solution" for blood pressure and asthma, despite an assurance given to court last year to stop them.

The court said it was not convinced by the company's apology and must explain in detail why it continued with its ads.

"Be ready for the consequences...take this contempt seriously," Justice Hima Kohli told Ramdev and the company's lawyers in court.

Though the judges did not say what action they could take against Ramdev, a contempt of a court directive under Indian law attracts a jail term of up to six months and a monetary penalty.

A Patanjali spokesperson said it will comply with the court's order.

Court papers show Patanjali last month filed an "unqualified apology" for the ads to the judges, with its lawyers again seeking forgiveness during Tuesday's hearing. The judges however were upset the company's written apology described some of Indian drug laws as "archaic".

"Shall we assume that every act that is archaic should not be (enforced)?" Justice Kohli said. "Your apology is not persuading this court. We think it's more of a lip service."

Ramdev has a huge following in India and offers yoga and ayurvedic cures for many illnesses through his TV shows.

He has often faced the ire of doctors and activists who accuse the firm of making incorrect assertions about medicinal efficacy, an allegation he denies.

Ramdev and Balkrishna must again appear before judges on April 10, the court said.

(Reporting by Shivam Patel, Aditya Kalra and Arpan Chaturvedi, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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Musk has friend in Missouri —

Missouri ag sues media matters over its x research, demands donor names, media watchdog slams "meritless, expensive, and harassing investigations.".

Jon Brodkin - Mar 26, 2024 7:38 pm UTC

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey yesterday sued Media Matters in an attempt to protect Elon Musk and X from the nonprofit watchdog group's investigations into hate speech on the social network. Bailey's lawsuit claims that "Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America."

Bailey didn't provide much detail on the alleged fraud but claimed that Media Matters is guilty of "fraudulent manipulation of data on X.com." That's apparently a reference to Media Matters reporting that X placed ads for major brands next to posts touting Hitler and Nazis. X has accused Media Matters of manipulating the site's algorithm by endlessly scrolling and refreshing.

Bailey yesterday issued an investigative demand seeking names and addresses of all Media Matters donors who live in Missouri and a range of internal communications and documents regarding the group's research on Musk and X. Bailey anticipates that Media Matters won't provide the requested materials, so he filed the lawsuit asking Cole County Circuit Court for an order to enforce the investigative demand.

"Because Media Matters has refused such efforts in other states and made clear that it will refuse any such efforts, the Attorney General seeks an order... compelling Media Matters to comply with the CID [Civil Investigative Demand] within 20 days," the lawsuit said.

Media Matters slams Musk and Missouri AG

Media Matters, which is separately fighting similar demands made by Texas, responded to Missouri's legal action in a statement provided to Ars today.

"Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Elon Musk has actually intensified his efforts to undermine free speech by enlisting Republican attorneys general across the country to initiate meritless, expensive, and harassing investigations against Media Matters in an attempt to punish critics," Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said. "This Missouri investigation is the latest in a transparent endeavor to squelch the First Amendment rights of researchers and reporters; it will have a chilling effect on news reporters."

Musk thanked Bailey for filing the lawsuit in a post that said, "Media Matters is doing everything it can to undermine the First Amendment. Truly an evil organization."

Bailey is seeking the names and addresses of all Media Matters donors from Missouri since January 1, 2023, and the amounts of each donation. He wants all promotional or marketing material sent to potential donors and documents showing how the donations were used.

Ads next to pro-Nazi content

Several of Bailey's demands relate to the Media Matters article titled, "As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content." Bailey wants all "documents related to the article, or to the events described in the article."

The Media Matters article displayed images of advertisements next to pro-Nazi posts. Musk previously sued Media Matters over the article, claiming the group "manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X's largest advertisers' paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content."

X said Media Matters did this by "endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X's largest advertisers' paid posts."

X also sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, but the lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge yesterday.

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• 02 April 2024

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I appreciate the urgent appeal by Christina Mangurian and Claire Brindis to hasten the achievement of gender parity and enhance diversity in science (see Nature 627 , S21; 2024 ).

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