Abstract:

This study investigates how the audience views online advertisements and the implication of this for the interest and patronage of the products advertised. The upsurge of the use of the Internet in Nigeria has inspired several online businesses. This is not surprising since businesses must move to where the customers are. The increased activities and time spent online by Internet users has also made the virtual space an appealing platform for advertisements. So alluring is the Internet that businesses that are not online also attempt to use web advertisements to pull customers to their physical shops. However, the audience may not be as receptive to these adverts as most businesses may expect. In fact, some Internet users tend to consider web advertisements as nuisances. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to find out the extent of audience’s exposure to web advertisements, audience’s disposition towards the advertisements, and how this disposition influences audience’s attitude towards the product being advertised. The survey design was adopted with a sample size of 279 respondents. Analysis of the data suggests that not only were the respondents exposed to online adverts, they had a positive disposition towards the adverts and that influenced their purchasing decision.