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An annoyance factor (aka annoyance effect) in advertising and brand management is either (i) a strategic aspect of an advertisement intended to help a message stick in the minds of consumers or (ii) a measured or inferred aspect used to evaluate the effectiveness of an advertisement or (iii) both. Traditional annoyance factors typically feature repetitive phrases or an annoying communicator. Annoyance factors – whether nuanced, subtle, or overt – might involve creating an unpleasant sound, such as a bad jingle – one that consumers can't get out of their minds. Advertisers generally try to appeal to positive emotions – and, using various gradations of annoyance can achieve that. Nonetheless, the goal is to etch a message in the minds of consumers without turning them off. Capital outlay for the use of it can be relatively expensive for major consumer product companies and the research behind it, highly sophisticated.

Applications
Annoyance factors – visual or auditory or both – can be in any combination of loudness, repetition, length ... in television, on the internet (e.g., pop-up, floating, and banner ads – see alarm fatigue), on the radio, print media, mobile devices, packaging, product displays, mail, false ads, and even pricing (e.g., tobacco – see Laffer curve).

The annoyance factors of some ad campaigns are subtle and increase over time. For instance, Folgers Coffee, on TV for years, ran high frequency ads featuring Mrs. Olson, portrayed by actress Virginia Christine (1920–1996). Some consumers initially perceived her messages as pleasant, but over time, annoying – as some research found. Yet, the annoyance technique was a successful brand-strengthening strategy. And, in this case (a high-frequency campaign), the target market could be multilayered. Consumers who infrequently watch TV will likely see the message at least once – while those who binge-watch, even if annoyed, might still choose Folgers, if for no other reason, because the name is etched in their heads.

There are, however, annoyance thresholds – thresholds that advertisers carefully monitor. Crossing them can adversely affect brands and consumer behavior.

Selected analysis
Factor analysis of perceptual items and attitude measures in online advertising:

Academicians Kelli S. Burns, PhD, and Richard J. Lutz, PhD, surveyed online users in 2002. In doing so, they chose six online ad formats: (i) banners, (ii) pop-ups, (iii) floating ads, (iv) skyscrapers, (v) large rectangles, and (vi) interstitials.

To develop perceptual factors, ratings of the 15 perceptual items for all six on-line ad formats were run through principal components analysis with varimax rotation. The authors inferred – from a scree plot – a possible three-factor solution. The first three factors accounted for over 68% of the total variance. The remaining 12 reflected no more than 5% of the variance, each. The below table, produced by Burns and Lutz, shows the loadings of the factors generated through principal component extraction and varimax rotation.

Annoyance factors that influence ad avoidance

 * Perceived intrusiveness
 * Perceived informativeness
 * Ad utilities
 * High-pressure advertising
 * Questionable and polarized advertising, including pharmaceuticals (patent medicine, including off-label use), firearms, political campaigns, tobacco

Theater analogy
Using annoyance as a device in advertising to help a message sink-in can be analogous to jarring devices used in performing arts. For example, in Alvin Ailey's December 6, 2019, premier of Greenwood at City Center in New York, Donald Byrd (born 1949), the choreographer, described his work as "theater of disruption" ... "it disrupts our thinking about things, especially, in particular, things around race." The dance performance addresses a 1921 racist mob attack in Tulsa's segregated Greenwood District, which, at the time, was one of the country's most affluent African American communities, known as "America's Black Wall Street." The New York Times, in a review of the production, posited the question, "Can Dance Make a More Just America? Donald Byrd Is Working on It."

Categories (temp)

 * Category:Advertising by type
 * Category:Business terms
 * Category:Consumer behaviour
 * Category:Consumer theory
 * Category:Types of marketing
 * Category:Advertising techniques