By: Dr. James McFarland, Social Psychologist
Most marketers worry about whether an ad will be seen or not. A quieter problem is whether it will be remembered as belonging to the brand that placed it. Decades of memory research suggest the answer depends less on the ad alone and more on where it lives. Below, I walk through what the studies show and what they mean for ad placement and creative direction.
Memory is tied to where it was made
In 1973, Endel Tulving and Donald Thomson described what they called encoding specificity. Put simply, we store a memory along with the setting we formed it in, and that setting later acts as the key that opens it.
The best-known demonstration came two years later. Duncan Godden and Alan Baddeley (1975) had 18 divers learn lists of words either on land or underwater, then tested them in the same place or the other one. Divers who learned and recalled on land remembered 13.5 words on average. Those who learned on land and recalled underwater remembered 8.6. Overall, changing the setting cost roughly a third of what people could recall.
Memory does not travel well. If the place a customer encounters your ad has nothing to do with the place they later shop, the ad has to work much harder to come back to mind.
Unrelated context crowds the ad out
The surrounding content can also compete with the ad for attention. Brad Bushman (2005) placed the same 12 ads in violent, sexual, or neutral TV programs and tested 336 adults. In the neutral program, brand recall was 68% higher and brand recognition 51% higher than in the violent or sexual programs. Viewers also chose 35% more of the advertised brands as ones they would buy.
A larger meta-analysis (Lull & Bushman, 2015; 53 experiments, 8,489 participants) found that violent programming lowered brand memory, while sexual programming had no significant effect on it. It also found that when the program and the ad matched (for example, a violent ad in a violent program), memory improved and buying intentions increased. Context matters and fit helps.
Field evidence agrees. Moorman, Neijens, and Smit (2002) placed test ads in the regular circulation of three magazines, interviewed 263 subscribers, and found thematically congruent ads were better remembered than incongruent ones. Vendor research points the same way: a study by Integral Ad Science and Neuro-Insight (2021, 60 participants) found that ads matched to their surrounding content produced 27% stronger overall memory and 23% stronger memory for detail.
Fit alone is not the whole story
If matching were enough, the best ad would simply blend in. It doesn’t. Furnham, Gunter, and Richardson (2002) found car ads were recalled better than food ads inside a food program. Jeong and King (2010) found that web banners relevant to the site were liked more, but not recalled more accurately. An ad that looks too much like its surroundings can disappear into them.
This is where distinctiveness comes in. The isolation effect, often called the von Restorff effect, shows that an item that differs from those around it is remembered better. Reed Hunt’s (1995) review adds an important qualifier: difference alone "is not sufficient" and "must be considered in the context of similarity." Something stands out only against a background it otherwise belongs to.
Meyers-Levy and Tybout (1989) found that products moderately out of step with their category were judged more favorably than either typical products or very odd ones. Heckler and Childers (1992) split surprise into two parts, whether something is expected and whether it is relevant, and showed the two can pull memory in opposite directions. Lee and Mason (1999) found that ads with unexpected but relevant information earned better attitudes than ads with expected information, while unexpected and irrelevant information did worse. The sweet spot is to be surprising, yet clearly on topic.
Being remembered is not the same as being credited
An ad can also be remembered and still not be remembered as yours. Drawing on Adtrack data from 800 commercials, Erik du Plessis (2005) reported that just over half of viewers recognized a typical ad, and only about a quarter of all respondents could name the right brand. Ipsos norms tell a similar story: on average, only half of those who recall an ad can name the sponsor, and in financial services that figure drops to three in ten.
Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute offers two fixes. The first, are distinctive brand assets (shapes, characters, colors, sounds) that make sure the memory gets filed under your name. A new 2026 analysis of 1,162 assets found shapes perform far stronger in memory than colors, with recognition scores of 40% versus 12%. The second, are category context entry points (i.e., the context/buying situations people use to search their memory), which give the ad the right setting to easily return to memory. In one B2B study, each extra entry point linked to a brand lowered the chance of a customer leaving by about 5% (Romaniuk, 2022).
What this means for marketers
- Place ads where the mind already is. Content that matches the category, the mood, or the buying moment tends to help recall. Content that grabs attention for other and perhaps unrelated reasons, like violence, tends to hurt it.
- Start within and stand out inside the category, not outside it. Aim for relevant but unexpected. Odd for its own sake costs memory and credit.
- Tie the ad to real buying situations. Link the brand to the moments when people actually shop.
- Brand early and clearly. Use distinctive assets so the memory people have is credited to you and not a competitor.
Closing thoughts
Much of this research listed above takes place in lab settings, and some industry figures come from vendors with a stake in the results. But overall, the direction and patterns tell a consistent story. Although, because exact numbers vary by category and medium, they must be treated as guideposts, not guarantees.
If you want your ads to stand out without being out of place, contact us here at Intermark. We can help you find the perfect balance between distinctive creative and the contexts for it to appear.
