General Discussion
The experiments of the present series show a highly consistent pattern of results. (1) The results confirm the negative evaluation of disruptive advertising via pop-up ads that is also reflected in large-scale surveys on this issue (Cho and Cheon 2004; Edwards, Li, and Lee 2002). In all experiments, the pop-up ads were rated as annoying. (2) In most experiments, ad annoyance was negatively correlated with the participants' ratings of how much they liked playing the Tetris game, suggesting that the annoyance caused by the disruption of the game may have interfered with the enjoyment of the primary task. (3) Most importantly, the present study served to test the question of whether the disruptive and annoying presentation of the pop-up ads during the Tetris game would subsequently lead to positive or negative advertising effects. Experiment 1 shows that the brands that were advertised via pop-up ads were well remembered, which suggests that disruptive advertising can increase brand recognition. This finding is to be expected given that the pop-up ads blocked the view on the game and required participants to interact with the ads, which resulted in the processing of the ad, and, thereby, of the brand name. An even more interesting finding is that disruptive advertising has a beneficial effect on brand preferences when participants are required to choose between advertised and non-advertised brands.