Bartosz W. Wojdynski

Going native: : Effects of disclosure position and language on the recognition and evaluation of online native advertising

Despite recent industry attention, questions remain about how native advertising is perceived and processed by consumers. Two experiments examined effects of language and positioning in native advertising disclosures on recognition of the content as advertising, effects of recognition on brand and publisher evaluations, and whether disclosure position affects visual attention. Findings show that middle or bottom positioning and wording using “advertising” or “sponsored” increased advertising recognition compared to other conditions, and ad recognition generally led to more negative evaluations. Visual attention mediated the relationship between disclosure position and advertising recognition. Theoretical, practical, and regulatory implications for disclosures in native advertising are discussed.

The Deceptiveness of Sponsored News Articles How Readers Recognize and Perceive Native Advertising

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.

Native Advertising and the Future of Mass Communication

Native advertising, defined as the practice by which a marketer borrows from the credibility of a content publisher by presenting paid content with a format and location that matches the publisher’s original content, has been the primary driving engine of the Internet marketing economy for several years. Spending on native advertising is projected to grow from

Interactive Data Graphics and Information Processing

4.7 billion in 2013 to

Boys Earn, Girls Buy: Depictions of Materialism on US Children's Branded-Entertainment Websites

21 billion by 2018 (Hoelzel, 2015), and advertising agencies are not only using native broadly but also hoping to increase their usage (Aldridge, 2016). While a majority of online marketing seeks to narrowly target users based on topic, through the use publication audience data, user tracking, collaborative filtering, and other techniques, native advertising not only gives users content that matches the topic of the publishers’ original content but also does so by copying the format of nonpaid content. Native advertising can take a wide variety of forms, ranging from sponsored posts on social media platforms, sponsored articles and videos on sites that publish original content, and sponsored links and recommendation blocks on content providers and Web search engines. Web content publishers and advertisers alike have for years sought solutions to Web consumers’ tendency to learn how to recognize online advertising and then summarily avoid it (Benway, 1998; Cho & Cheon, 2004) or skip it (Chatterjee, 2008). Native advertising may offer the most promising “solution” yet to the problem of ad avoidance, by presenting advertisements that resemble original content in form and function. As Lee, Kim, and Ham (2016) point out in this issue, however, consumers’ higher levels of engagement with native advertising may be a double-edged sword. They may spend more time with native advertisements because the content is less intrusive and more engaging than other forms of online advertising. However, they may also spend more time with native advertisements because they do not immediately realize that the content itself is paid advertising. In the past few years, a number of prominent voices

Moody news: The impact of collective emotion ratings on online news consumers’ attitudes, memory, and behavioral intentions

Among the chief promises of interactivity in news content online are that it leads to improved engagement with and attitudes toward content, yet scholarship is mixed on how such effects should occur, and under what conditions they do so. This study sought to examine the processes and conditions for effects of interactivity on processing online health news containing graphically displayed data. An experiment (N = 86) was conducted using online health news to examine these effects and test two previously proposed mechanisms – namely, those of increased involvement and perceived interactivity. Interactivity of information graphics accompanying an online health article was manipulated across three ordinal levels, and effects on postexposure attitudes and memory measures obtained. Preexisting level of involvement with the content domain and numerical aptitude were measured and tested as potential moderators of effects. The results showed that involvement with the content domain moderated the role of interactiv...

The three dimensions of website navigability: Explication and effects

The Web is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous medium in childrens lives, and toy brands frequently use Web sites to promote their products to children. Research has shown that exposure to affluence and materialistic behavior on television over time is correlated with materialistic values in children, but little research has explored the amount and types of materialistic content that children are exposed to on the Web. Furthermore, given that some toy brands are highly gender-specific, the types of depictions of materialism may differ between sites targeting girls and those targeting boys, which could reinforce gender stereotypes pertaining to wealth and consumption. This study undertook a content analysis of US childrens toy-affiliated Web sites and provides initial evidence that childrens Web sites depict affluence and materialism, and the type and frequency of those depictions vary by gender. Web sites targeting girls promoted consumption behaviors and those targeting boys focused on gaining wealth.

Distraction effects of contextual advertising on online news processing: an eye-tracking study

Indicators of collective user behavior and opinion are increasingly common features of online news stories and may include information about how the story made users feel. An experiment (N = 298) examined the effects of the presence and valence of a “mood meter” posted alongside an online human-interest story on memory for, attitude toward, emotional response to, and intentions to share the story. The presence of a mood meter led to lower recall of story content, more negative attitudes toward the story, and less positive emotional responses. The results suggest that participating in a mood meter may attenuate positive responses to human-interest stories.

The effects of disclosure format on native advertising recognition and audience perceptions of legacy and online news publishers

Although the navigability of digital interfaces has been long discussed as a key determinant of media effects of web use, existing scholarship has not yielded a clear conceptual understanding of navigability, nor how to measure perceived navigability as an outcome. The present paper attempts to redress both and proposes that navigability be conceptually examined along three dimensions, namely, logic of structure, clarity of structure, and clarity of target. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial between‐subjects experiment (N = 128) was conducted to examine distinct contributions of these dimensions to perceptions of a nonprofit website. The results showed significant effects for logic of structure and clarity on perceived navigability, while logic of structure and content domain involvement affected attitudes toward the website.

Picture This: The Influence of Emotionally Valenced Images, On Attention, Selection, and Sharing of Social Media News

ABSTRACT Although recent scholarship has shown that congruency between editorial content and display advertising on web pages can lead to favourable outcomes for the advertiser, it is unclear whether these gains for advertisers come at the expense of users’ ability to process the content. To examine whether contextual in-page advertising distracts users during information processing, a 2 (target message argument type: weak/strong) × 2 (ad relevance: high/low) between-subjects factorial experiment (N = 99) examined how readers of a news article about risks associated with texting while driving (a) paid attention to the article, (b) paid attention to the advertisements, and (c) were persuaded by the article contents. Participants’ visual attention was captured unobtrusively using a device-mounted eye-tracking device. The findings show that readers were more likely to be persuaded by weaker arguments when the article was presented alongside highly relevant display ads than when the article was presented alongside less relevant ads. Readers also paid greater attention to relevant ads than irrelevant ads, and, surprisingly, readers in the strong argument condition paid more attention to the story content when it was presented alongside relevant ads. The implications for theories of visual attention and for online content publishers are discussed.