This issue represents my inaugural compilation on behalf of the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR). I want to thank Bob Barocci for encouraging my involvement with the Journal and Joe Plummer for generously offering to share his editorship of it with me. Through its unique focus on persuasive consumer and customer communication and its authoritative yet highly accessible content, the JAR has no doubt introduced or illuminated for many advertisers and researchers, as it has for me, the latest approaches, applications, and debates in the field. With Joe Plummer I look forward to leading the journal toward even greater relevance among what we hope to be an expanded readership of marketing professionals—both practitioners and academics.

This study examines the mixed-media strategy of advertising online and publicizing the web location in magazine advertisements. It also analyzes the extent of integration between websites and print advertisements in six major U.S. magazines. In creating an online commercial site, it is important to recognize that the internet requires different marketing and advertising practices than those used in traditional media. Mixed-media advertising necessitates coordinated efforts between those managing the website and those designing advertisements for other media. The findings suggest that marketers are not exploiting all possible benefits of their websites by not adequately integrating print and online advertising efforts.

Advertising effectiveness tests combining surveys and electronic tracking of online advertising are common, and the method is increasingly being utilized within more comprehensive, cross-media methodologies. The validity of these tests, however, has sometimes been called into question because of the short duration between online advertising exposure and survey taking. Using a unique database containing more than 1,600 online advertising campaigns, we find that there is a measurable but weak relationship between time since last exposure and branding effectiveness, indicating the shortness of duration does not have a substantial impact on the validity of these tests.

Although viral marketing has garnered a great deal of attention in the trade press, almost nothing is known about the motivations, attitudes, and behaviors of the people (those sending the email to others) that constitute the essential component of any such strategy. This article reports the results of three studies that examine consumer responses and motivations to pass along email. Implications for target selection and message creation are discussed for advertising practitioners interested in implementing viral efforts, and suggestions for future research relating to computer-mediated consumer-to-consumer interactions are presented for academic researchers.These studies were sponsored by Planetfeedback.com (www.planetfeedback.com), an internet-based infomediary company based in Cincinnati.An earlier version of this work will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming book, Online Consumer Psychology, C. Haugvedt, K. Macleit, and R. Yalch (eds.).

This study investigated determinants of internet users' willingness to pay for online content. A survey of internet users of a clip art website found that they did conduct benefits/costs analysis when evaluating whether to pay for online content. Usage purpose and experience with online purchasing emerged as significant predictors. Further, the study confirmed the existence of “free” mentality among online content users. Managerial implications are explored.

Advertisers are recognizing the internet's potential for helping firms directly communicate with consumers using media rich emails. Though the efficiency of such emails cannot be denied, their effectiveness needs to be assessed. It is argued that components of promotional emails are likely to be evaluated differently by males and females. The results from a survey suggest that women and men differ in their evaluation of information content and the visual presentation used in emails. Compared to men, women were also more concerned about privacy and preferred to use the media to build social contacts. Implications for using promotional emails are discussed.

This study looks into different types of interactive functions, and the associative relationship between these interactive functions and website ranking. Six types of interactive functions are identified, and four of them are found to be significant in affecting website ranking. The four important types of interactive functions are Online Two-way Communication, Customization, Content Variety, and Interactive Job Search.

This study shows that “waste”—the perceived extravagance of an advertisement—contributes to advertising effectiveness by increasing credibility. It draws especially on the “Handicap Principle” in biology: animals use wasteful characteristics to signal their exceptional biological fitness. It hypothesizes that excesses in advertising work in a similar way by signaling “brand fitness.” TV advertisements were evaluated online for perceived advertising expense, message, brand familiarity, quality, reliability, and likelihood of choosing. High perceived advertising expense enhances an advertisement's persuasiveness significantly, but largely indirectly, by strengthening perceptions of brand quality.

317 Internet and Magazine Advertising: Integrated Partnerships or Not?

327 Decay Effects in Online Advertising: Quantifying the Impact of Time Since Last Exposure on Branding Effectiveness

333 Viral Marketing or Electronic Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Examining Consumer Responses and Motivations to Pass Along Email

349 Will Internet Users Pay for Online Content?

360 Impact of Gender Differences on the Evaluation of Promotional Emails

369 The Relationship between Interactive Functions and Website Ranking

375 The Waste in Advertising Is the Part That Works