Is a website known by the banner ads it hosts? Assessing forward and reciprocal spillover effects of banner ads and host websites

While marketers often rely upon banner ads to generate revenues, it is unclear as to how these ads might influence consumer perceptions of host websites. This paper provides a theoretical and experimental framework to propose and examine the effect of animation and brand advertised in a banner ad on consumers' attitude towards a host website and on WOM behaviour. Results indicate that while presence of animation has a negative influence on the host site and WOM behaviour when the brand advertised is an unfavourable one, it neither benefits nor hurts a host website evaluation and WOM behaviour when a favourable brand is advertised. Overall, as website managers contend for exposure-based metrics (e.g. 'impressions' that serve to generate revenue for each banner ad exposure), and as advertisers argue for better evidence of the performance of their ads through click-through rates, we suggest that websites first need to factor in the long-term costs of hosting animated banner ads.