Abstract: The significance of internet advertising has been widely recognized by businessmen. Studies show that the psychological effect of internet advertising is influenced by the features relevant to advertising itself, such as the format and interactivity of internet advertising, the animation of advertising elements, emotions, product types, and the expectations, involvement, prior experience and gender of the audience, the environment of internet, and so on. Scholars have proposed theoretical explanations for the effectiveness of this type of advertising such as the Modified Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Interactive Advertising Model. However, there still exist some problems. For example, the exploration of other influential factors, the application of new methods of study, further specification of the dependent indexes and the improvement in the power of theoretical explanation.

Key words: internet advertising, modified elaboration likelihood model, the interactive advertising model, involvement