Advertising works more effectively over headphones
Advertising consumed via headphones is even more effective, as a marketing expert from UCSDO has determined. The reason for this is said to be content that is perceived as being closer.
"We found that headphones produce a phenomenon called in-head localization, which makes the acoustic content sound as if it is being generated in the head itself," explains On Amir, a marketing expert from the University of California, San Diego. The content would be perceived as closer, both physically and socially. "As a result, listeners perceive the content as warmer, they feel and behave more empathetically toward it, and are more easily persuaded by it."
A question of proper sound reinforcement
The finding is based on five different studies, including both field research and online surveys with more than 4,000 participants. All show that users of headphones felt closeness to the speaker, while other research looked at the medium's effects on empathy and persuasion. For example, one experiment used the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform to find 1,310 adults and play them a clip of a mother and daughter talking about homelessness. There was a speaker group and a headphone group.
Those who listened to the clip via headphones reported feeling more empathy toward the content than the speaker group, and that the mother and daughter seemed more authentic in comparison. In 2022, U.S. radio ad spending is expected to reach $14.8 billion. Revenue from U.S. podcast advertising is estimated to top $2 billion by 2023. "If the goal is to make listeners feel close to the communicator or particularly persuaded by their message, marketing managers need to consider placing their ads or message in a medium that is frequently consumed through headphones, like a podcast," said UCLA researcher Alicea Lieberman. (pte)
