The plasma synthetic jet actuator (PSJA) is a geometric variant of a plasma actuator, consisting of an annular electrode array that results in a circular region of dielectric bar-rier discharge plasma. In quiescent conditions, it is observed that this plasma region drives the residual fluid in the form of a vertical zero net mass flux (synthetic) jet that is useful for flow control applications, particularly separation reduction. Pulsatile operation of the PSJA results in formation of multiple counter-rotating vortical structures in the flowfield, resembling conventional synthetic jet actuators. The velocity and momentum of the result-ing jet are found to be affected by the input power, embedded electrode diameter, pulsing frequency and structure of the plasma region. This paper specifically investigates the ef-fect of variation in plasma morphology on the isolated jet characteristics. Three distinct morphological states are examined for both steady and pulsed operation of the actuator. PIV based measurements of the flowfield are used in conjunction with time exposed images captured by a CCD camera to relate non-dimensional relative plasma intensities to the jet characteristics. It was found that for the particular actuator investigated herein, increasing the intensity and extent of the plasma resulted in improving the plasma induced jet velocity and momentum substantially. The efficiency of the actuator in injecting momentum to the fluid was found to be affected by both the plasma intensity and pulsing frequency, with the former being the most critical factor.