Sponsored news is a form of native advertising that has engendered much hope as a solution for digital publishing revenue woes, but also much concern about whether the average consumer can discern ...its advertising nature. Recent U.S. federal guidelines and industry recommendations preach clear and conspicuous labeling of sponsored news articles, but little is known about how individual readers interpret these labels, and how their interpretation shapes their understanding of article content. The present study contributes knowledge to the former areas by presenting the results of a between-subjects experiment (N = 343) that tested the effects of four disclosure characteristics (proximity, visual prominence, wording clarity, and logo presence) on recognition of the sponsored content as advertising, and by analyzing the psychological process through which such recognition influences perceptions of the article and the sponsor. The results show that while logo presence and visual prominence increase the odds of recognition, logo presence also increases misperception of the disclosure label as a stand-alone display advertisement. Recognition of the article as advertising led to decreased perceptions of article quality, attitude toward the sponsor, and intent to share the article. A serial mediation analysis shows that the effects of recognition on attitudes and intent to share are primarily mediated through conceptual persuasion knowledge activation and perceived deceptiveness of the article. Implications of these findings for practitioners and for the application of persuasion theories to covert advertising are discussed.
Saving Media or Trading on Trust? Amazeen, Michelle A.; Muddiman, Ashley R.
Digital journalism,
02/2018, Letnik:
6, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Extending research from Wojdynski and Evans, this experimental study replicates the challenges of effectively disclosing native advertising to readers and demonstrates a promising inoculation method ...that increases likelihood of recognition. Moreover, this quantitative research indicates that both legacy and online news publishers were evaluated less favorably for displaying native advertising. Attitudes toward the publisher and perceptions of its credibility declined for both, although online publishers suffered greater attitudinal damage than did legacy publishers who may benefit from their established reputation.
A Tale of Two Sources in Native Advertising Wu, Mu; Huang, Yan; Li, Ruobing ...
The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills),
11/2016, Letnik:
60, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In the strategic communication field, native advertising has been hailed as the next big trend. However, this type of marketing technique may negatively affect the perceptions of brands as well as ...media outlets that provide such content due to its obscurity of persuasive intent and ambiguity of the content source. The current study examined these issues by conducting a 2 (priming: presence vs. absence) × 2 (media credibility: high vs. low) × 2 (corporate credibility: high vs. low) factorial between-subjects experiment. A total of 500 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the online experiment. Findings suggested that priming of native advertising information would significantly improve users’ ad recognition and change their content perception. In addition, a series of three-way interaction effects suggested that the interaction between the two types of source credibility (media and corporate) tend to work as a function of priming of native advertising information, which could completely change individuals’ perception of the ad content and evaluation of the media source in the future, but not their future corporate evaluation. Important theoretical as well as practical implications have also been discussed in this article.
Despite the increasing popularity and advantage of native advertising on social media, advertisers are concerned about the possibility of native ads misleading consumers, resulting in boomerang ...effects. This study attempts to address this concern by comparing the predictive role of native ad nonintrusiveness with that of native ad manipulativeness in consumers’ attitude toward and sharing intention of native advertising. Findings from an online survey of 550 U.S. adult consumers showed that native ad nonintrusiveness was positively related to attitude toward and sharing intention of native advertising, whereas native ad manipulativeness was not. Consumers’ ad skepticism and persuasion knowledge were negatively related to attitude toward and sharing intention of native advertising; but persuasion knowledge became nonsignificant when native ad nonintrusiveness and manipulativeness were included in regression models. Additionally, those with stronger information-seeking motivation showed more positive attitudinal and behavioral responses. This study advances the knowledge of native advertising by examining the possibility of its being a double-edged sword. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
The Challenges Native Advertising Poses Campbell, Colin; Grimm, Pamela E.
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing,
01/2019, Letnik:
38, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Native advertising is a new form of online advertising that appears in many settings, such as blogs, social media, and entertainment and news publications. Native ads typically blend with their ...surrounding context, stem from sources or placements that do not signal advertising, lack overtly persuasive or sales-focused messaging, and have less clear material outcomes. Such characteristics raise ethical concerns because native ads are more difficult for consumers to identify and because they challenge concepts that are central to current deceptive advertising policy. Native advertising is a Federal Trade Commission enforcement priority, and the agency has developed guidelines for this new ad form. However, the unique characteristics of native advertising likely require novel approaches to protect consumers. In this article, the authors trace the evolution of regulation relevant to native advertising. They identify shortcomings and propose remedies that the Federal Trade Commission or industry could adopt to prevent consumer harm, detect infractions, and enforce its regulations. The authors also develop an agenda for future research needed to more fully inform public policy and industry response in this arena.
The advertising industry has recently witnessed proliferation in native ads, which are inserted into a web stream (e.g., a list of news articles or social media posts) and look like the surrounding ...nonsponsored contents. This study is among the first to examine native ads and unveil how their effectiveness changes across serial positions by analyzing a large-scale data set with 120 ads. For each ad, the authors use separate “natural experiment” studies to compare the ad’s performance as its serial position varies. Subsequently, they conduct a meta-analysis to generalize the results across all studies. The results reveal vastly asymmetric effects of native ad serial position on publishers’ metrics (click-based) versus advertisers’ metrics (conversion-based). As serial position lowers (i.e., from rank 1 to a lower rank), there are only modest changes in publishers’ metrics, but drastic reductions in advertisers’. This pattern is unique to native ads and has not been indicated by prior research on ad serial position. Moreover, the authors show the moderating effects of audience gender and age. The findings provide new and timely implications for researchers and marketers.
This study explores how young millennials understand and respond to newsfeed native advertising on Facebook, rooting our focus on its covert nature of the ad format. Drawing insight from two ...persuasion-related theories, we conducted focus group interviews and in-depth interviews with Facebook users aged 19-29. The study revealed three major themes regarding their interactions with newsfeed ads: persuasion knowledge, positive and negative experiences and avoidant coping responses. Participants showed a high level of persuasion knowledge of how Facebook newsfeed ads work and ambivalent attitudes toward newsfeed native ads. Despite some benefits, newsfeed native ads presented strong negative responses, which were often accompanied by reactance and ad avoidance. Multiple themes regarding negative experiences emerged: ad intrusiveness, ad clutter, a lack of relevance, too personal, privacy concern, goal impediment and covertness. Participants also voiced less autonomy in controlling their exposure to newsfeed ads. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed and a model for future research is provided.
Native Advertising in Online News Aribarg, Anocha; Schwartz, Eric M.
Journal of marketing research,
02/2020, Letnik:
57, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Native advertising is a type of online advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears. In practice, the choice between display and in-feed native advertising ...presents brand advertisers and online news publishers with conflicting objectives. Advertisers face a trade-off between ad clicks and brand recognition, whereas publishers need to strike a balance between ad clicks and the platform's trustworthiness. For policy makers, concerns that native advertising confuses customers prompted the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to issue guidelines for disclosing native ads. This research aims to understand how consumers respond to native ads versus display ads and to different styles of native ad disclosures, using randomized online and field experiments combining behavioral clickstream, eye movement, and survey response data. The results show that when the position of an ad on a news page is controlled for, a native ad generates a higher click-through rate because it better resembles the surrounding editorial content. However, a display ad leads to more visual attention, brand recognition, and trustworthiness for the website than a native ad.
This study investigates the effects of narrative ads, which differ in terms of narrative focus and brand prominence in a native advertising context. Considering the recent methodological debates ...about advertising and consumer experiments, we aim to design the research to be as realistic as possible. We produced video ad stimuli and published them as sponsored posts on Instagram to test the effects in a real-life setting. In this way, online engagement behavior was examined through social media metrics. The users who clicked on the ad were directed to the research website and asked to answer the scales of narrative transportation and attitude toward the ad. While the ads achieved different engagement results in line with their content features, transportation and attitude results demonstrate the superiority of narrative ads, which are product-oriented and with low brand prominence.
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