Study: Sex in Ads Improves Men's Purchase Intent
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http://www.mediaanalyzer.com http://www.adweek.com

But has the opposite effect on women. Also finds sexual ads worsen brand
recall for men and women. First ever large-scale visual test of sexual ads.

SOMERVILLE, Mass., Oct. 17, 2005 /PRNewswire/ -- Sex in print advertisements
improves the ad effectiveness for men, including ad-like, product-like, and
purchase intent, while it decreases ad effectiveness for women. For both men
and women, sexual ads make it less likely that they will recall correctly
which brand an ad was promoting.
These are the top findings of a study conducted by market research company
MediaAnalyzer Inc. The study has been published in AdWeek's October 17, 2005
issue (http://www.adweek.com/).
The online test combined a questionnaire and a visual test using the new
and unique AttentionTracking method (web-based eye tracking). It thus featured
the first ever large-scale visual test of what people look at when they see
ads with sexual themes. This allowed the study to provide some insight into
why sexual ads work the way they do.
Some of the conclusions: Sexual ads have a strong, polarizing effect on
the visual behavior of men and women. Men spend a high amount of attention on
the sexual imagery (e.g., female breasts, legs, and exposed skin). While this
does increase ad liking and product liking, and transfers to purchase intent,
it draws men's attention from other elements such as the brand logo --one of
the reasons why their brand recall is worse than women's. Women, on the other
hand, avoided looking at sexual imagery or even exposed skin.
"You can increase purchase intent using sex when advertising to men. But
you pay a price; brand recall suffers. That means using sex in ads only makes
sense for companies with a well-established brand, or those where branding
plays no role," said Karsten Weide, President and CEO, MediaAnalyzer Inc.
The study also found that sexual ads polarize the sexes in general: While
men like ads with sexual themes and do not think they have negative effects on
society, women feel the opposite way. Most women believe there is too much sex
in advertising (58%), and more than 40% of all women feel that sexual ads
signify and promote a general deterioration of moral and social values, and
pose a threat to the proper upbringing of children, respectively.
The study tested ten current US print-ads, five of them included sexual
imagery and five did not, with 400 US respondents split evenly between men and
women.

About MediaAnalyzer
MediaAnalyzer Software & Research was founded in 2001 and is a full-
service market research company. The internationally active company serves
more than 100 customers, including Barclaycard, Cadbury, The Economist, ESPN,
GfK, IBM, Heinz, Honda, Ipsos, Johnson & Johnson, L'Oreal, Siemens, Toyota,
Unilever and ZDNet.
More information on MediaAnalyzer is available at
http://www.mediaanalyzer.com.



SOURCE MediaAnalyzer Inc.
Web Site: http://www.mediaanalyzer.com http://www.adweek.com