The Effect of Sport Events Environments on Audience Attention to Advertising Using Brain Activity

Background. Attention is considered as a resource for storing and processing memory activities. Without attention, no perceptual processing takes place in the brain as the information (whether visual or auditory) cannot enter the brain. Objectives. The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the attention of individuals to sports and nonsports advertising using brain activities. Methods. It was a quasi-experimental study investigating two advertisements (sports and non-sports) of Apple Company on 30 volunteers (15 men and 15 women). The Neuroguide software was used to convert electroencephalographic data to quantitative data. Repeated measures ANOVA was used for testing hypotheses in SPSS software. Results. The results showed that there was a significant difference between watching sports and non-sports advertising on people's attention; in other words, sports advertising was able to reduce alpha in the frontal and pre-frontal brain while this decrease did not occur when viewing non-sports advertising. There was no significant difference in attention between men and women. Conclusion. Sport has the potential to attract people's attention, which is one of the main goals of companies and industry owners and can attract more attention in people to the advertised product, resulting in better brand retention and recall, and thus increasing promotional product or brand purchases.