Does richness lead to riches?

Abstract: The advertising climate is very dynamic; media and the way companies advertise have evolved countless times since the end of the 19thcentury. Advertising spending in print-based media has been steadily decreasing in Europe during the past years, whereas advertising spending online and on television has been increasing.The emergence of social media as an advertising medium has significantly impacted the advertising climate. Even though it is not yet fully matured, some advertisers believe social media to be the ideal medium, and perhaps the primary medium, to be utilized as an advertising channel in the future. Others believe that the enormous amount of online clutter will be its Achilles heel, hindering its effectiveness in the future. The purpose of this degree project was to study how ad-space buyers perceive different media channels and understand how these perceptions influence the selection of media. Our aim was to fill the research gap of whether the task-media fit hypothesis is applicable in an advertising setting.During our research we have conducted a qualitative study, gathering data through semi-structured interviews from some of the largest media agenciesand ad-space buyersin Northern Europe. We have incorporated a deductive research approach, thus incorporating elements from both the inductive and deductive research approaches. During the course of our study, we have developed our theoretical framework based on communication theories.The purpose of this study is to investigate the role media richness has in advertising. We have striven to gain an understanding of how ad-space buyers perceive different media channels in terms of richness and how these perceptions influence the media selection process.We can conclude that ad-space buyers in fact perceive media types to possess different levels of media richness, and that these perceptions influencethe media selection process based on the communication strategy at hand. However, we can also conclude that regardless of how rich the media is,the ad-space buyer will not select it if the price is too high. Thus,the media selection is therefore not cost-effective.