As noted earlier, the importance of interactivity in Web advertising has been widely accepted. In fact, interactivity is central to WA and is a key difference between WA and traditional advertising (Cho & Leckenby, 1999; McMillan & Hwang, 2002; Roehm & Haugtvedt, 1999). The Web is significantly more interactive than traditional media (Bezjian-Avery et al., 1998; Steuer, 1992). Although most traditional advertising media also contain some features of interactivity, the Web brings together various interactive features available in other media and adds new interactive capabilities of its own. Following is a brief review of some of the key literature on the interactive nature of WA.
Although there are a variety of conceptualizations of interactivity, this somewhat complicated construct can be summarized with a few critical characteristics. In general, interactivity enables consumers to control what information they see, for how long, how many times, in what order, and when. McMillan and Hwang (2002), in their scale development of perceived interactivity, proposed that critical characteristics of interactivity are direction of communication (two-way or one-way), users’ control, and time. The direction of communication denotes the concepts of responsiveness and exchange; users’ control refers to how much users can control the content or navigation on the Web; and the time embraces issues such as timely feedback and time required for information retrieval.
Specifically, researchers who examine ways that new media can facilitate interactions between humans often focus on the importance of enabling two-way communication among individuals and the capability of new media for providing feedback (Day, 1998; Pavlik, 1998; Rafaeli & Sudweeks, 1997). Some studies focus on how humans control computers (Murray, 1997; Xie, 2000), while other studies focus on how control systems (such as navigation tools) are designed into new media environments (Laurel, 1990; Nielson, 2000; Schneiderman, 1998). A third type of interactivity identified in the literature is interaction with the messages received both from other individuals and from the computer. A key element of this interaction is time. The interaction with either human- or computer-based messages is influenced by the speed with which messages can be delivered and the speed with which individuals process messages (Nielson, 2000; Vora, 1998).
A primary feature of interactivity is that it enhances the consumer’s role in media consumption. Consumers can select (or click) any individual WA content whenever they want and search for commercial information to help them make purchasing decisions. Moreover, consumers can give feedback or personal information about themselves (e.g., to get catalog, to ask for customer service, etc.). They also determine how long to stay at a Web site. In other words, the duration of advertising is up to consumers, not to advertisers. In the case of a Web site as a WA format, consumers can revisit whenever they want.
Consumer-controlled commercial content is an important characteristic of WA, and is enhanced by other benefits of interactivity such as two-way, timely communication. This co-participation by both marketers and consumers enables WA to be customized to fit the consumer’s needs and is one of the critical benefits of WA (Roehm & Haugtvedt, 1999). While consumers can hardly control the marketing communication flow and messages in traditional media, the customization of commercial information for consumer’s needs is increasingly allowed on the Internet. Marketing researchers (e.g., Sterne, 1995) also argue that the Web is a pull medium, not a push medium (pulling consumers to the messages instead of pushing messages to the consumers). It totally depends on consumer’s volition to continue surfing. In short, how WA is perceived and dealt with varies by consumers along with a variety of navigation flows across different consumers.