E.A. van Reijmersdal

A New Branch of Advertising: Reviewing Factors That Influence Reactions to Product Placement

ABSTRACT This literature review presents a quantitative synthesis of 57 studies on product placement and shows which factors are most effective. It shows that placement characteristics, such as placement commerciality, modality, and prominence, have a strong impact on audience reactions. Audience characteristics, such as attitudes and beliefs about brand placement, advertising, and media, also shape audience reactions to brand placement. Advertising and psychological theories provide valuable explanations for the majority of the effects. However, the authors call for development of theories on capacity constraints and implicit processing as these can explain effects that are specific to brand placement.

How media factors affect audience responses to brand placement

This study investigates the influence of media factors on brand placement effects in a real-life setting. Although many studies on brand placement have been conducted, insights into context effects on brand placement reactions are scarce. The impact of objective and subjective media context factors is studied for brands placed in four different television shows. Drawing on a survey of 1195 viewers, we found that genre, programme attitude and the programme’s informational value had positive effects on brand placement reactions. These results support theories on ‘spillover effects’ and media gratifications. The effect of genre on viewers’ behaviour was partially mediated by the programme’s perceived informational value. This study shows the importance of context factors in brand placement effects.

Today's practice of brand placement and the industry behind it

This article presents a content analysis of brand placement on Dutch television, followed by 24 interviews with the parties involved. By combining a content analysis and a practitioners’ perspective, this article offers unique insights into the increasingly popular phenomenon of integrating advertising into television content. Analysis of one week’s television programming showed that programmes with brand placement are growing into a significant part of Dutch television. A fifth of these sponsored programmes can be classified as brand-integrated programmes in which brands are an intrinsic part of the programme. The practitioner interviews showed that these brand-integrated programmes were considered as the future of advertising. Moreover, the interviews gave insights into the mutual relationships between the different parties, showing that practitioners use the law restrictions to estimate the acceptance levels of the audience with respect to television sponsoring.

Children's Responses to Advertising in Social Games

This study explored childrens (ages 9 through 12) level of persuasion knowledge and peer influence susceptibility concerning advertising in social games and investigated how these variables affect childrens desire for the brands advertised in these games. Results showed that (1) children have a fairly good knowledge of the advertising in social games yet hold uncritical attitudes toward it and claim to be not very susceptible to peer influence; (2) the most important predictors of childrens desire for the advertised brands are a low critical attitude and high peer influence susceptibility; and (3) recognition and understanding of advertising in social games is effective in reducing advertised brand desire only for children who are familiar with social games.

The effects of brand placement disclosures on skepticism and brand memory

Abstract Recently, the European Union decreed that European countries should use disclosures of brand placement in programs and movies on television to guarantee fair communication. However, an understanding of the effects of disclosing brand placement is lacking. The present study is the first to test the impact of the new TV sponsorship regulations regarding disclosure of brand placement. In an experiment (N = 107), we examine viewers’ opinions about disclosures along with the effects of disclosure timings. Analyses show that brand memory increases when a disclosure is shown. In addition, brand memory is significantly higher when the disclosure is shown during the placement than when it is shown after the placement. Disclosures do not seem to activate critical attitudes. Respondents confronted with a disclosure, regardless of the timing, were not more skeptical towards brand placement than respondents who were not exposed to a disclosure. These findings have important implications for theory and public policy regarding brand placement disclosures.

Disclosing the persuasive nature of advergames: moderation effects of mood on brand responses via persuasion knowledge

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the effects of advergame disclosures were moderated by gamers’ moods. More specifically, we tested whether the effects of disclosures on brand recall, game attitude, and brand attitude via activated persuasion knowledge were different for people in positive moods than in negative moods. An experiment (n = 127) showed a moderated mediation effect: advergame disclosures activated persuasion knowledge, which resulted in higher brand recall, but also in more negative game and brand attitudes. This mediated effect was only significant for people in positive moods: a disclosure raised awareness of the advergames persuasive nature, which subsequently led to more critical processing. People in negative moods already processed the advergame in a critical manner. These findings have important implications for theory, legislation, and the advertising practice.

Disclosing celebrity endorsement in a television program to mitigate persuasion: how disclosure type and celebrity credibility interact

This experiment (N = 165) examined the effects of two aspects of in-program celebrity endorsement on brand attitudes and product claim acceptance: credibility of the celebrity and the effects of disclosure types. Although there is an increasing call for endorsement disclosures, the effects of these disclosures remained unstudied. This study, conducted in The Netherlands, showed that disclosure of the persuasive intent of in-program celebrity endorsements only resulted in reduced acceptance of product claims among viewers who did not perceive the celebrity in the endorsement as credible. This study has important implications for legislators.

Brand prominence in advergames: effects on children’s explicit and implicit memory

Increasingly, advertisers use techniques that integrate persuasive messages into editorial content, resulting in blurred boundaries between advertising, entertainment, and information (Raney et al., 2003). Many of these techniques aim to reach children: Advergames, branded websites, and brand placements have invaded media targeted toward children (Calvert, 2008; Moore, 2004).

The effects of emotional television advertising on older and younger adults

Understanding older adults’ responses to advertising is vital for the industry because older adults constitute a large and lucrative market: The world population is aging (United Nations, 2012) and consumers of 50 years and older have more disposable income than younger consumers (e.g., Ahmad, 2003; Carrigan and Szmigin, 2000; Moschis, 2012; Yoon et al., 2009). Surprisingly, research on older adults’ processing of advertising is rather limited (e.g., Gunter, 1998; Micu and Chowdhury, 2010; Moschis, 2012; Simcock and Sudbury, 2006; Yoon et al., 2009).

Age differences in recall and liking of arousing television commercials

Abstract This article examines whether there are differences between older and younger adults in recall and liking of arousing television commercials. As hypothesized, the experiment demonstrated that older adults remembered brands and products in calm commercials better than in arousing commercials, and they also liked calm commercials more. In contrast, younger adults remembered brands and products in arousing commercials better and they liked these commercials more. In addition, (curvi)linear relationships showed that for older adults arousal deteriorates their recall and liking, whereas for younger adults arousal – up to a certain point – is beneficial. These findings strongly suggest that advertising effects found in younger samples are unlikely to be the same for older target groups. An important practical implication is that it currently seems wise to make commercials targeted towards older adults calm instead of arousing when the aim is to generate brand recall and liking.