Does Editorial Content and Media Vehicle Congruence Influence Advertising Recall?

While research investigating advertising effectiveness often focuses on the advertisement itself, the context in which an advertisement is embedded is also an important factor. This article analyses the influence of editorial content and readers' expectations for the media vehicle on advertising recall. Literature results substantiate the hypotheses that an editorial context congruent with an advertisement as well as a context that matches reader expectations for newspaper content improves the recall of advertisements. A field experiment is conducted to investigate these issues empirically. Research hypotheses are largely supported by the results of the study.