In this article we examine factors that might impact on web
advertising recall and recognition. These factors include the viewing
mode, duration of page viewing, and web page context factors, including
text and page background complexity and the style of the banner
advertisement. Via an experimental design conducted on a student
sample, we manipulate these factors over several levels. The key
finding is that the longer a person is exposed to a web page containing
a banner advertisement, the more likely they are to remember that
banner advertisement. We also find that recognition scores are much
higher than both unaided and aided recall scores. Finally, web users in
a goal-directed mode are much less likely to recall and recognize
banner advertisements than users who are surfing a site.