The Effect of Ad Content on Subjects' Attention: An Alpha Band Power Study

Advertising will be useless if they fail to attract the attention of the audience. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in the frontal and prefrontal area in connection with the power of the alpha band while watching commercial advertisement.

The research design was semi experimental and 30 participants (15 men and 15 women) watched two advertises (sports and non-sports). In this research, the Neuro Guide software was used to convert electro-encephalographic data to quantitative data.

The results of the study showed that alpha power decreased in most of the channels among all individuals during watching the sports advertisements. This decrease was not observed when watching non-sports advertisements. This difference was also examined in terms of gender effect and the results showed that there was no significant difference between male and female.

Our data suggested that the use of sport elements may enhance attention toward advertisement and lead to a long-lasting and efficacious memory retention.