The theory of mere exposure has been actively explored in advertising, in terms of two concepts from the theory: attitudes can also change without cognition; mere exposure makes attitudes more favorable. According to these ideas, people are more likely to purchase a brand name product as opposed to its generic counterpart because the brand name product is more familiar to them. Hence, the awareness of this product is higher, in turn these factors of familiarity and awareness arise key positive emotions in the consumer.

Krugman (1977) proposes that emotional and visual elements of advertising increase preferred attitudes toward the advertising. Several other studies show that consumers tend to form their preferences on the basis of elements, such as liking, feelings, and emotions induced by advertising or familiarity triggered by mere exposure to advertising (Batra and Ray, 1986; Stuart, Shimp and Engel, 1987; Janiszewski and Warlop, 1993). Chris (1993) provides evidence that mere exposure effects persist when initial exposure to brand names and product packages are incidental and devoid of any intentional effort to process the brand information. These unintentional mere exposure effects are attributed to encourage a consumer to have a more favorable attitude toward the brand, even when the consumer can not recollect the initial exposure. Franzen (1994) argues that advertisements mentally processed only at the subconscious pre-attentive level can, with repetition, still produce an effective response. Such stimuli arouse, via mere exposure, feelings of familiarity, attraction and positive attitudes, even in the absence of cognitive processing and conscious assessment of messages. A substantial body of empirical literature supports this proposition that the repeated exposure of an individual to a stimulus will, of itself, enhance that person's familiarity with liking for the stimulus. Those studies suggest that the feeling of advertising can be directly connected with the brand without any reasoning.

The mere exposure effect can also be used to explain why commercials run for an extended length of time until the familiarity toward the advertising is acquired among consumers. This effect is more crucial in new or relatively unknown brands to compete against other relatively unknown brands or well-established brands. Baker (1999) finds that advertising employing mere exposure can successfully impact the choice against competitors with superior performance characteristics if (1) the brands have comparable familiarity and (2) consumers are not motivated to discriminate brands on the basis of performance criteria. All things being equal, consumers may be more likely to approach and select a brand that has an exposure advantage. Pechman and Stewart (1989) suggest that attitudes toward advertising are related to the number of exposures to advertising. So, unfamiliar advertising messages take longer to reach their optimal effectiveness, while the effect of advertising also decreases after several exposures. Mitchell and Olson (1981) show that the favorable reaction toward advertising and the brand preference are highly related to each other. This means attitudes toward advertising affect attitudes toward the brand and the reverse also happens. The successful result of the mere exposure in advertising and brand preference was founded in such companies as Kraft Foods, Proctor and Gamble and Unilever. Marketing strategies of those companies chose mass advertising campaigns to make their products the familiar ones among consumers, using the mere exposure theory.

The mere exposure effect can be studied in research on sales promotions beyond advertising. Huff and Alden(1998) find that consumers have the positive attitude toward the coupon because of its familiarity though three Asian countries have some degree of difference in their attitude. They show that the greater the consumer's familiarity with coupon, the more positive the attitude toward them. Bennett (1999) finds that mere exposure effects sports sponsorship by measuring sports spectators recall of sponsors' and other advertising businesss posters around the perimeters of playing pitches. He points out that mere exposure effects could be more powerful at sporting events than in other circumstances in that sports sponsorship even appears to potential customers as less overtly commercial than conventional advertising.

Further, the mere exposure effect can be exist in computer-mediated advertising. Ong Wong and Fortin (1999) developed a model of mere exposure effects for banner advertising to link the theory of mere exposure effect and the phenomena of banner advertising on the WWW. They suggest 'familiarity', 'intensity of competitive interference', 'vividness' and 'correct advertising placement' as the underlying factors to influence mere exposure induced by banner advertising. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau's Chairman and Senior V.P. of Advertising at ESPN/ABC News Internet Ventures(www.iab.net), a single Web ad banner exposure enhances the positive perception of advertising brands and improves the likelihood of consumer purchase. A study by the IAB shows that mere exposure to banner ads yields high consumer awareness. In the same study, the IAB concludes that 63% of the people strongly agree that brands advertising on the web are forward thinking. The IAB study also find that the click-through metric, which is the percentage of users who click on ad banners to connect to an advertisers site, is not always appropriate to evaluate the success of online advertising campaigns. Advertising banner exposure is found to be responsible for 96% of advertising awareness, compared to click-through which contributed only 4%.