Marketing managers and creatives alike believe that authenticity is an essential element for effective advertising. However, no common understanding of authenticity in advertising exists, and empirical knowledge about its impact on consumer behavior is limited. In this study, the authors use a comprehensive literature review and qualitative studies to identify four dimensions of authenticity in an advertising context. By examining 323 television ads across 67 brands and four years, they investigate these dimensions' effects on the sales performance of advertised products. Because the impact of authenticity may depend on brand or product characteristics, the authors also analyze how these effects vary with brand size or across hedonic and utilitarian products. The results suggest that authenticity influences consumer behavior in a more nuanced manner than previously recognized. For instance, whereas an ad congruent with the brand's essence has a positive effect on sales in most cases, an overly honest advertising message can actually hurt performance; the latter is true especially for hedonic products, for which consumers rely more on subjective information when making purchase decisions.

Many studies have quantified the effects of TV ad spending or gross rating points on brand sales. Yet this effect is likely moderated by the different types of brand-related messages or cues (e.g., logo, brand attributes) embedded in the ads and by the ways (e.g., explicitly or implicitly) these cues are conveyed to TV audiences. The authors thus measure 17 cues often used within ads to build brand awareness (or salience) and brand image and investigate their influence on ad effectiveness. Technically, the study builds a dynamic model to quantify the effects of advertising on sales; builds a robust and interpretable (i.e., nonparametric and sparse) factor model that integrates correlated, left-censored branding cues; and then models the effects of advertising as a function of the factors identified by these cues. An analysis of 177 campaigns aired by 62 brands finds that salience cues (e.g., logo) and benefit and attribute messages moderate ad effectiveness. It also finds that explicit cues are more effective than implicit ones; nonetheless, the primary drivers of ad effectiveness are visual salience cues: the duration and frequency with which the logo and the duration with which the product are displayed. The study can thus suggest ways brand and ad agency managers can improve the effects of creative ad content on sales.

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Consumers who are uninterested in a TV ad or are annoyed by it may avoid the ad, limiting the effectiveness of not only the ad but also the remaining commercial break. Active avoidance—known as “zapping”—is potentially a major concern for both advertisers and broadcasters. In two studies, the authors investigate whether and why ad content drives or mitigates zapping and develop a conceptual framework linking multiple content factors to psychological reactions that then affect zapping. They test the content–zapping relationship by drawing on a dataset reflecting the zapping behavior of over 2,500 German television viewers combined with advertising data and content information for 1,315 spots representing 308 brands from 96 categories. The results of the first study show that ad creativity is associated with less zapping, whereas a strong information focus and a prominent or early integration of branding elements are associated with more zapping. The findings also reveal that the effects differ significantly for products with a utilitarian (vs. hedonic) consumption purpose and for search (vs. experience) goods. The results of the second study show that irritation (determined by, e.g., annoyance, feeling offended, or overwhelmed) vis-à-vis enjoyment acts as the central mechanism in explaining why ad content affects zapping.

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