Abstract:  The Internet has encouraged a dramatic expansion in the variety and creativity of language. In fact, lots of cases have emerged of using the Internet language in various commercial communication situations, such as advertisements. However, scarce research attention has been paid to the effectiveness of such practices. To fill the gap, this study explores the impact of the Internet language copy on consumers’ attention and perceptions of the advertisement based on previous researches in linguistics, psychology and marketing literature. The current research proposes that the Internet language is characterized by high level of interestingness and low level of rigorousness. The results reveal that using the Internet language copy in advertisements leads to more attention paid to the texts than to pictures, and has a positive impact on product evaluation but a negative influence on the ad trust. Two studies are conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the Internet language copy on the attentions and perceptions of advertisements. In Study 1, the researchers testify to the impact of using the Internet language copy on consumers’ attentions by using an eye-tracking experiment. Study 2 examines whether consumers’ perceptions (product evaluation and perceptions of trustworthiness) would be influenced by comparing the Internet language copy with standard language copy. The possible mediators are also explored in Study 2. The results of the present research are three-fold. The first study shows that the Internet language copy draws more attention to the text than standard language does. However, the attention paid to pictures will be decreased if the advertisement is only shown for a limited time (6 s in the experiment). The second study demonstrates that the Internet language copy has a favorable influence on product evaluation and an unfavorable influence on the ad trust. The former influence is partially mediated by the ad’s perceived interestingness, while the latter is fully mediated by the perceived rigorousness of the advertisement. The empirical findings presented not only extend the previous findings in language-related research by studying the Internet language, but also contribute to researches on marketing communication in general. Managerial implications include that the Internet language should be used in cases when firms seek to increase the product evaluations but should be avoided if the perception of trust is critical.

Key words: Internet language, consumer perception, attention, trust, product evaluation