The Perceived Effectiveness of Visual Communication Elements in Cinema Video Advertisements: Demographic Factors Analysis​

Abstract

The evolution in advertising has shifted the reliance of advertisers from printed materials to video advertisements. Globally, various industries especially the cinema industry, have adopted this form of advertising to meet their marketing goals. Yet, video advertisements are still considered ineffective. Thus, the study set out to find out the perceptions of the cinema viewers on visual communication elements in cinema video advertisements, analyse the effectiveness of the cinema video and determine the mean differences in the effectiveness of the elements in video advertisements across gender, education level and age. It is a cross-sectional survey study using the causal-comparative approach. 240 Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam and Management and Science University (MSU) students participated in the study. TGV Cinemas and Golden Screen Cinemas were selected as the sampled video advertisements. The questionnaire used was adapted from [2], [3] and [33]. It was revealed that the image and video shots were positively perceived as the most effective communication elements in delivering the messages compared to other visual communication elements and the cinema video advertisements were comprehensible, yet they were not highly effective as an advertising platform since the advertising objectives were not achieved. In addition, the analysis of the demographic factors showed that there were significant mean differences between the four visual communication elements and age groups. Thus, the study suggests advertisers incorporate more creativity in producing interactive and immersive video advertisements to optimise the effectiveness of their advertisements.