Advertising Content Analysis
A systematic, objective, and quantitative analysis of
advertising conducted to infer a pattern of advertising
practice or the elements of brands’ advertising
strategies such as brand positioning, selling
proposition, and creative tone
 If academic in nature, is usually used to identify
trends in practice general relationships between ad
characteristics and ad effects
 If applied in nature, is usually used to identify practice
of competitors in terms of positioning, tone, audience,
etc.
Defining the Sample Universe
 In advertising content analysis (ACA), the units of
measurement are advertisements, not people
 Clearly define the universe to eliminate all ambiguity
and clearly define the terminology used in the
definition
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Bad: “The content analysis will examine instances of
competitive advertising.”
Better: “The content analysis will examine the
toothpaste advertising of Crest, Colgate, Arm &
Hammer, Mentadent, and Aqua Fresh. The sample
universe consists of ads appearing between January 1
and December 31, 1995 in the following media:
television, radio, newspapers and magazines.”
Sampling Frame Selection
 In applied ACA, often a census is used. No
sampling frame is required.
 In academic ACA, the sample must be
representative of the universe and large
enough to enable generalizations about the
universe of ads
 Multistage selection can be used to identify
ads according to multiple criteria
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See multistage example, p. 400
Sampling by Peterson
1. Select all magazines that, according to
SRDS, are read by all age groups (thirteen
publications identified)
2. Collect all 1989 (most recent full year
available at time of study) issues of each
magazine
3. Select all ads in all magazines that use
human models (1673 ads)
Developing Categories
 Categories represent the information that will
be extracted from the ads
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E.g. format, appeal type, message arguments,
musical elements, ad style
 Each category must have categorical
dimensions identified
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Format: slice of life, testimonial, celebrity
endorsement, etc
Appeal type: humor, fear, sex, cognitive, etc.
Ad style: temporal pacing, formality, etc.
Category Formation Example
 In a study relating ad content and design
elements to ad outcome measures, Lohtia et.
al. devised the following categories
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Ad Objective
Offering Type
Design Elements Used
Interactive Elements Used
Communication Cues Used
Appeal Type
Measurement Types in ACA
 Nominal
 Checklists for elements present, or
characteristics existing
 Interval (or Ordinal)
 Likert or SD scales for measuring perceived
characteristics, such as argument strength,
friendliness, formality
 Ratio
 Temporal characteristics, ad size, number of
words, etc
Assessing Reliability
 Often content analyses utilize multiple coders
to measure the same ads, and often many
criteria are subjective
 Intercoder reliability is a measure of the
extent to which independent coders agree
with each other
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Reliability = 2M/(N1 + N2)
M = number of agreed upon measures
Ni = number of decisions made by coder I
R = 2(80)/200 = 0.8
Other Reliability Assessments
 pi index corrects for chance agreement
 pi = (% observed agreement - % expected
agreement)/(1 - % expected agreement)
 pi = (0.8 - 0.5)/(1 – 0.5) = 0.6
OR
 Ir = {[(F0 / N) – (1/k)][k / (k - 1)]}.5
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F0 = number of items agreed upon
N = total number of codings
k = number of coding dimensions
 Ir
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= {[(80/100) – (1/6)][6/(6-1)]}.5
= [(.8 - .167)(6/5)].5
= .87
Analysis and Interpretation
 From this point, provided the reliability is
acceptable, analysis can proceed as with any
other nominal (descriptives [Peterson
tables]), interval or ratio data (inferences
[Lohtia Figure 1])
Example ACA (Lohtia, et. al., 2003)
 Hypothesized relationships between banner ad content/design
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and click through rates
Collected 10,000+ banner ads from an online ad agency
(sampling frame defined as all banner ads served by the agency
during a specific time period; assumed to be representative of
all domestic ads served by other agencies)
Generated categories based on research hypotheses (related to
content and design)
Defined dimensions within categories
Trained coders on sub sample of ads
Refined categories
Split sample for coding by independent judges
Judges assess and code thousands of ads
Holdout sample used to assess reliability
Analysis and Reporting
Design an ACA Study
 From Kassarjian (page 8), design a study to
address your assigned issue (1, 2, 3, or 6)
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Operationalize Sampling Plan
Develop Categories
Suggest Analysis of Data
Address Issues of Intercoder Reliability
Coding Practice
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Find 10 magazine print ads (first full single-page ad from each magazine)
Code the ads using the following categories:
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Use of spokesperson
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Animal
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Human
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Common
Famous
Common
Famous
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Identified
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Not identified
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None
Call to action
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Direct
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Indirect
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None
Information Content
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Facts
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Opinions
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Rhetoric
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Storytelling
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None
Product Shown
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Prominently
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In background
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Not at all