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1. Introduction
Music is regarded as an important advertising background characteristic ([2] Allan, 2006). Popular music, because of its connection to our daily lives, is universally used in ads to transfer messages. When watching TV, it is almost impossible not to be inundated by the profusion of popular music in ads. In the USA, 86 percent of prime-time television ads contain some type of music, and among these, 14 percent contain popular music ([3] Allan, 2008). In Taiwan, examples include Elva's new song "WOW" and parts of its music video combined with a Volkswagen car ad and a Dancing online-game ad, award-winning pop singer Jolin Tsai's "Let's Move It" in a Toyota commercial, and singer-songwriter Alexander Wang Leehom's songs used as promotional singles for Sony Ericsson's various new models. In all of these examples, the integration of popular music and advertising, often called perfect marriage of commerce and art ([11] Billboard, 2003), has successfully captured the attention of youth, and improved advertising effects ([61] Shea, 2004).
The wide use of music in advertising practices has led to a rich body of literature examining the effects of advertising music. Research topics have ranged from musical structural elements such as volume, tempo, and timbre to non-structural elements such as music fit and likeability (e.g. [5] Alpert et al. , 2005; [32] Lavack and Thakor, 2008; [48] Oakes, 2007). However, relatively few studies have focused their attention on popular music - as such, the distinctive characteristics of popular music have been neglected ([48] Oakes, 2007).
Popular music differs from other kinds of advertising music, such as jingles and needle drop ([59] Scott, 1990), in at least two aspects. One is that popular music recorded by singers for albums, movies, or dramas are broadcast on a massive scale for a fixed period of time ([62] Shuker, 1994); therefore, it is easier to connect period-relative memories that affect audience's advertising responses. Second, as compared to needle drop without lyrics or jingles whose lyrics are written for a particular ad, Taiwanese popular music lyrics are usually written based on love themes ([60] Shaw and Su, 2001). Therefore, in terms of the use of popular music in advertising, the songs' release period and the lyrics' relevance to the product are the two...